Playing Tourist

During December the average high temperatures inland have been up in the 90s. Meanwhile the coast offers much cooler temperatures and a lovely ocean breeze. The pleasant weather coupled with the holidays leads everyone in Windhoek on a mass exodus either to the coast or back home to their farms and villages. Over New Years weekend I joined the masses of vacationers and tourists in the coastal town of Swakopmund.

Like any tourist town, Swakop offers endless activities like sand boarding, quad biking, skydiving, helicopter rides, or simply lounging at the beach. I, instead, turned north to drive up the coast exploring new areas of Namibia I'd never been to.

The northwest shores of Namibia have been labeled the "Skeleton Coast" because of all the ships that have been stranded along the shallow coastline leaving only their decaying skeletons for tourists to photograph. Just south of Henties Bay is the Zeila shipwreck, an old fishing vessel that came free from its towing cable on it's way to Bombay, India in August 2008. Now it's simply a popular tourist site and a nesting home for cormorants.

Continuing north, about 30km past Henties Bay you come across a sign for the Strathmore South "Dead Sea." Turning right you follow a corrugated dirt road 17.4km into the desert. It's passable in a 2x4 if you drive extremely slow, though you may have to replace your shocks afterward (like I had to do!). Following small white signs pointing to the dead sea, you eventually come to a small water hole filled by an underground spring, all that's left of an abandoned tin mine. The water is so dense with salt and minerals that it makes you float, just like at the famous Dead Sea in Israel! (I highly recommend bringing a jug of fresh water to rinse off after swimming.)

Continuing north on the C34 another 20km you pass through the salt flats and famous lichen fields before finally reaching the Cape Cross Seal Reserve. Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão was the first European to reach the area in 1486. He erected a stone pillar with a cross on top, after which Cape Cross was named. The original was removed by the German colonials and later replaced by two replicas.

Cape Cross is also home to the largest colony of Cape fur seals in the world, with sometimes tens of thousands of seals present. November-December is birthing season, so there were tons of baby seals while we were there! There was a nice gated walkway where tourists could view the seals from, but keep in mind the smell and sound can at times be quite severe.