Sossusvlei to Swakopmund

Today, we planned to travel ONLY 320km to the next town, Swakopmund. Bearing in mind that according to the World Economic Forum, Namibia has the best roads in Africa, that should be easy, right? Wrong, wrong, wrong! This is a good example of statistics being entirely wrong because the entire premise is false. Tarmac kilometres/ population looks great, but it's entirely meaningless in a large country with a small population, where most roads, even main roads, are dirt track. Worse, they are covered in stones and sand and have innumerable ruts and potholes.

Thus, a 320km journey with not a single town en route was a new form of hell. The camper shakes like crazy. Every now and again, a cry from the back, "X is going to fall off!". We made it though, with no burst tyres, and only the wiring for the back lights, which had shaken loose to fix.. En route, we did stop to pee and Kaka, where there was nowhere to hide, and we took photos at the sign for the tropic of Capricorn.

30km before Swalopmund is Walis Bay, which it turns out is quite big and has lots of fancy houses, and lots more decent houses. It's not on any European tour of Namibia, but it seems other southern Africans love it for fishing and kite surfing. It looks attractive, but look closely at any photos, as it is very windy and rather cold. Nevertheless, we go for a walk along the beach where there are a lot of flamingos.

Then around 5 pm we are in Swapokmund, and we decide to eat in a restaurant, as we can't be bothered cooking. The campsite host recommends Altstadt, and we go there and have some tasty Bavarian/Austrian food and good draft beer.

We all have a great laugh and as we pee before leaving, the young boys, not Cedric, notice that the pictures are not sand dunes, and tumble weed, but rather women's breasts and vaginas. As we noted in Lüderitz, political correctness has not reached Namibia yet.Weiterlesen