Driving into Swakopmund was a lot different to how I had pictured it was going to be, and I wasn’t really prepared for what I saw – sand dunes sifting their sandy volume across the roads by rather gusty winds which were also giving me and the steering wheel quite the jiggle around. The road was a high contrasting black against the orange sand and pretty ‘hotel like’ palm trees were planted all the way down the centre. The change was so abrupt too; one minute we were happily cruising along flat plains of desert and gravel with a gorgeous blue sky and then suddenly all visibility went from infinite to ‘oo I can only just make out the car 10 metres in front of me, I better slow right down’. The sand dunes were incredible how they just took over anything in their way, including the train tracks which, several men were trying to recover by shovelling mounds of sand aside that just inevitably blew straight back on the track again. I hoped they hadn’t been there all day. It was unreal.
Then, I realised this was Walvis bay, 30km out of Swakopmund. It is the port Swakop never managed to get or beat. I guess I was a little ahead of myself and the GPS, so the drive continued a little more, down a very long road which ran nicely parallel to the Atlantic Ocean. The view of the ocean was much closer than at Lüderitz, however this did make it rather difficult for me to pay my full attention on the road. In the end though, I did manage to get us to our destination safely, and in one piece.
Here is the Swakop wharf and some nice waves crashing on the shore.
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