Namibia Day 4: To the Coast

​We had a leisurely morning today, and spent almost an hour relaxing at the hotel, enjoying the wildlife and the views of the dunes from our room.  

We left the hotel around 9:30, and stopped at the “pink fridge” for final photos of the Gondwana sites. The pink fridge is a landmark for the Desert Grace Resort, which really focused on pink, purportedly because of the reddish color of the dunes that rise up behind the resort. Whatever the reason, bright pink was featured throughout the lodge. The Pink fridge, complete with complimentary  bottles of cold water inside, was on top of a little hill and was accompanied by two chairs and a table, and a pink frame for taking framed photos.  These frames are all over the place in Namibia. The little hill was also a great spot for photos of the mountains and dunes that surrounded the area. 

We made another stop about 30 minutes later at the town/ roadhouse of Solitaire.  This tiny town that was devolving into oblivion has reinvented itself as a tourist stop. There were lots of antique abandoned cars and farm equipment, often with flowers planted nearby,  a bakery and general store, gas station and even lodgings. We got some post cards and a few provisions and hit the road with clean windows. 

Our destination was Walvis Bay on the Atlantic Coast.  The first part of the journey was driving through an incredible variety of mountains and sand dunes.  We enjoyed the windy roads and spectacular rock formations. Much  of the topography was unlike anything we had ever seen before. Many of the mountains looked like a giant dump truck had unloaded a pile of rocks and they all stuck together in a big heap. There were also miles of jagged trenches in the rolling hills, and many more unusual geological formations. 

The last hour of the journey was just flat sand - so unremarkable and unchanging that we both dozed off. As we approached the coast, we started seeing miles of dunes, and as we neared Walvis Bay, the road was lined with large palm trees, planted to break the wind that carried sand into the road. 

Later in the afternoon we had a little tour of Walvis Bay. The most interesting thing we did was drive out on along the coast where there were salt pans on both sides of the road in which hundreds of flamingos and a variety of other birds were feeding. There was also a big salt processing plant out there. 

Walvis Bay is a huge port that handles shipping into and out of the southern part of Africa. There were miles of industrial and shipping buildings and equipment along the roads near the coast. As such, it isn’t a  particularly attractive town. 

So we drove to Swakopmund, which is a very attractive and charming seaside resort town founded by the Germans in the late nineteenth century.  We walked around in an elegant hotel that used to be the railroad station.  

There was also a lot of interesting 19th century architecture, an iconic old lighthouse, a long jetty, and a lovely  view of the town strung out along the Atlantic Coast. 

Then we returned to Walvis Bay for dinner and bed.