Free Day in Swakopmund

Tuesday 10th April – Free Day in Swakopmund

After the hectic and relentless pace of the previous few days it was a good feeling to have a free day to just chill out, catch up on diary writing, explore the town and do a little shopping. I left the hotel and wondered through the town down to the waterfront area and engaged in some light hearted banter with a couple of eager spruikers at the craft market. Most of these guys speak excellent English and were very friendly, although obviously very keen to convince me that their stuff was worth buying.

Due to the combination of closeness to the ocean, well organised street layout, manicured gardens, wonderful restaurants and very mild climate Swakopmund proved a very popular place with our group. The only disappointment was the Dunedin Guesthouse. Apart from the lack of hot water the bathroom was cramped, windowless and damp and the electricity was inclined to turn itself off and on again at random intervals. I would strongly advise other travellers to Swakopmund to give this place a wide berth and look elsewhere.

For dinner we believed we had a group booking at the TUG Restaurant. This is a large converted tugboat perched right on the Atlantic Coast at the base of the pier. It has a reputation for fine food and an atmosphere that would be hard to match anywhere in the world.

Our problem was that when we arrived at the restaurant the receptionist told us that the booking had accidentally been written into the book for the previous evening ! In spite of this they still found us two large tables right up in the wheelhouse. We arrived just after sunset and could watch the enormous breaking waves crashing into the rocks just below us. It is easy to feel that we were on the edge of an enormous ocean, in fact if we continued westwards the next landmass we would encounter would be the east coast of South America.

The meal itself was indeed delicious and actually not as expensive as we feared it might have been. When we emerged at the end of the meal, we found that the evening was fine and clear. The sky above was ablaze with starlight and made a wonderful counterpoint to the huge waves beneath our feet. We decided to walk out to the end of the long pier and get a closer look at the ocean. I cannot recall a more impressive pier anywhere. As we walked further and further out you could feel the immense power of the waves as they crashed against the pylons under our feet. The lights of Swakopmund gradually retreated into the distance behind us as we walked towards the large Japanese sushi restaurant which is perched right at the end of the pier. We felt a little cheeky and decided to gatecrash the restaurant to see what it was like inside. We found that sections of the floor have been replaced with large transparent panels allowing the patrons to see the floodlit roaring ocean literally right under their feet.

It had been a remarkable evening and we were all in high spirits as we strolled slowly back through the town to our hotel. It was a perfect was to end our brief interlude in Swakopmund before heading back out into the wilderness of Spitzkoppe and Etosha National Park.Baca lagi