Flying over the Skeleton Coast

Walvis Baai 

Walvis Baai/Bay (still pronounced Walfish Bay from a previous name) is on the coast. This a major town by Namibian standards and while the Germans have influenced most places, the British left their mark here. The road out of Sossusvlei was awful for the first few hundred kilometres with lots of corrugations. I’m sure our car has many more rattles than when it started. 

We stayed in the campground of a hotel. We were the first ones there so had our pick of the campsites and choose a paved one close to the very modern and clean ablutions block. We did some shopping and headed down to the waterfront to photograph the flamingos. The sun was shining straight at us which ruins your photos. We had a scenic flight booked for the following afternoon, so had time to go back in the morning. 

The flamingos love it here as their favourite pink algae is in the water. You can find them all along the waterfront which wasn't too far from where we were staying.

Pelicans love it here too

Sand moving across the highway

The following morning was very windy and I was worried we wouldn't be able to see anything clearly on the flight. Lindsay had an upset stomach and didn't make the 30 minute trip up to Swakopumnd without having to stop. The flight is nearly 3 hours so he didn’t want to take the chance and just as well as he wouldn’t have made it. He stayed back at the office and entertained them for the afternoon while I went on the flight. It was pretty amazing. We went over the Kuiseb river and canyon, Tsondabvlei, Sossusvlei, Diamond camps, Edward Bohlen shipwreck, Shawnee shipwreck, Sandwich Harbour, Walvis Bay harbour and Swakopmund. The girl next to me was scared of flying and grabbed some paper bags just in case. It got hot with the sun beaming in on me while we were in the desert and I worried that I might get sick, but neither of us were. 

Seals

Edward Bohlen Shipwreck

Not all the dunes are the same colour

Back to the coast

Shawnee Shipwreck

Yep, I think that is a road along the beach, you would want to have done your homework on the tides

I love the abstract lines of the rivers

How pretty is that lime colour, they are flamingos in the water

A community just out of town

Salt Works

I was tired when we touched down, it's a long flight and I really hoped Lindsay would be at the airport to pick me up so I didn’t have to go back to their office as we still had a half hour trip back to Walvis Bay. Very happy to see him; he was in good spirits and didn't seem to mind missing out on the flight.

Shipwreck Zeila

This shipwreck is easily accessible from the main road just north of Swakopmund.

Our itinerary included Cape Cross to see the fur seals but as we had over 870kms to do over the following 2 days, I ask Lindsay a few days beforehand if he wanted to skip it as we hadn’t paid and I could just send an email and cancel. We ask the tourist office the best road to take as the coast road looked the shortest but there are gates that you have to be through by 3pm and what if we didn’t make it? She suggests we take the longer route towards Twyfelfontein and there’s a camp there. We didn’t get that far but opted for one a bit closer as we didn’t want to get caught out. We had done 495kms on gravel. Google says 6 hours, whatever it had been it was a long day. 

You don't want anyone driving in front of you as the dust just sits there if there isn't any wind

Abu Huab Camp 

Our camp at Abu Huab

Abu Huab campsite had interesting showers. Four cubicles were around a tree, with the shower roses in the middle. The walls weren’t really tall enough for privacy! Though I have to say they were the most spacious shower cubicles on the trip. I’m not sure if the spot we chose was really a campsite as everyone else had been escorted to their sites which had a primitive fence marking off their area. We didn't care, we were happy.

Showers on the left under the tree, this was the only set out of three that had all working parts. A very basic camp.

 

Ongongo Waterfall Camp

Ongongo Camp, the roof was a welcome relief as it was heating up

The following destination was always supposed to be a transit stop. It was called the Waterfall camp and Lindsay was dubious that there would be any water there whatsoever. Ha. There was, and somewhere to swim too, not very deep but a small natural pool nonetheless. It was only 200kms (about 3 hrs) from the last camp so we had the afternoon to relax. From the town we followed some rudimentary signs to the camp. Passing lots of children with their hands out begging. We heard that someone had given some sweets to a couple of the children but this had caused the others who missed out to get upset. Even though we had some balloons to give them, we decided not to as we didn’t want to make anyone unhappy. To get into the camp you need to drive down into canyon of sorts and cross the river to get to some of the campsites including ours. Our only water crossing on this trip! There we had a covered area with bench, sink and three lights. Across from this was our private shower and toilet. 

The waterfall and pool at Ongongo

We got chatting to a Dutch couple who love Australia and have been there a couple of times. We ended up taking our South African red wine to their site after dinner. It was delicious, funny how I would never describe white wine like this. Their campsite was on the other side of the river. Rock hoping during daylight was fine but getting back to our campsite in the dark without a torch made the journey a bit trickier.

Houses have to be made with what is available and affordable

Farmers have to move their stock to where the food is

It's not always easy taking photos while moving on a corrugated gravel road!

Baobab trees are similar to Boab trees in the north of Australia

About a five hour drive awaited us the next day, 331kms with a stop in Opuwo to fuel up and get groceries. We are headed for the Epupa Falls.

Want to start at the beginning of this trip? Namibia - Pt 1