Sailed up the western coast of Africa from Cape Town to the next country north of South Africa Namibia.
We arrived in Luderitz early morning on a Sunday and as we expected, the town was quiet with local residents at church and enjoying their day of rest – so we did not expect much in this very small, sleepy town.
Luderitz located between the Namib desert and the Atlantic, was established by German settlers in early 1900’s when diamonds were discovered – and as we found out, they did not dig for those diamonds, they were sitting there just under a layer of sand. The diamond miners had staff on their stomachs crawling the dessert inch by inch and in the course of two years mined some 2 tons of diamonds. They built a town called Kolmanskop which today is a ghost town. It was abandoned in 1915 when the diamonds dried up and found new diamonds south of Luderitz. At Kolmanskop, a fourth generation native of the area told us the story of the small town, its rise in luxury and final demise to being a ghost town. Very interesting in deed and very sad as you can sense the impeding demolition of the buildings by the wind blown sand over the next 20 years.
Traveling back to the ship, it was noticeable that stores were closed, and walking around would be to see the original German architecture. We decided to have a good lunch, meet friends on the ship.
The following day, we sailed further up the coast to Walvis Bay, arriving at noon, we had the most highly anticipated excursion, “where the dunes meet the ocean” in which we would be in 4×4 vehicles and travel up the coast along the dunes of the desert which borders the ocean. We stopped along the way to see the bay where flamingos and pelicans hang out eating on the small fish. Then we traveled to a salt mining operation and touch the salt in the trapped waters. Picking up samples of sand our driver Jani, took a magnet and simply extracted the iron from the sand. The close up photo of the sand shows the tiny traces of diamond, ruby, iron and many other minerals in the sand. Our caravan of 4×4’s then entered the national park, and as we traveled the dunes got higher and higher – our driver grew up driving these sand hills and he gave us a thrill and his driving ability made us very comfortable…. midpoint we had a snack break on the dune overlooking the nearby ocean and had wonderful champaign, beer (Namibia has excellent beer), finger foods of various cheeses and pastries.
On the way back, we had more exciting Sand dune climbing and going down huge sand mounds.. Like driving on snow except warmer and the sand is more predicatble. Along the coast, we felt like the episode of Top Gear that was filmed here a few years ago.
Arriving back at the ship at 5:30, we had to do a quick drop off of our stuff and get onto another bus that was taking us to Viking’s special event – Diner cookout and party in the middle of the Desert – they had 700 guests all bussed some 50 minutes away into the middle of the desert among the high dunes – to a tented pavilion that had white cloth tables, all the beer, wine and food you could imagine. The steak was spring buck venison and local sausages too.
After the diner was done, we gazed at the stars in the sky and enjoyed the near dark conditions you don’t get in south Florida. We traveled back to the ship, staff there welcomed us back on board with music and Congo music and up in the pool area, had a chocolate & wine buffet to enjoy before going to bed. WHAT A DAY it was!
