At the beginning of February, 2008 saw us clearing out of South Africa for the run up the West African coast, aided by the cold north setting Benquela current.
After having run the three Capes on the East African wild coast it was now time for the notorious “Skeleton Coast” so called because of the numerous bones of ships sticking out of the sand dunes. This is an arid desert sand dune coast though you don’t see much of it for the cold waters cause thick fogs many miles out to sea. We were back into fleece jackets and waterproofs.
Our plan was to try and visit the arid Kalahari desert and Etosha Game Reserve in northern Namibia all be it the rainy season. The safest anchorage was Walvis Bay in central Namibia which is about 750 miles north of Cape Town. We did two hops calling in at Saldanha Bay to visit Kevin on South Moon, another Canadian boat followed by a pleasant stop in Luderitz before Walvis Bay.
We made landfall in Walvis Bay in the mid morning of February 20th bursting out of the fog into bright sunshine with a waterfront lined with buildings, Containers and ships and picked up a mooring at Walvis Bay Yacht Club – not to move for another two weeks. Cold beers, hot showers – oh so good. Another pleasant club which welcomes visitors (as do all Yacht Clubs in Southern Africa) everyone is so helpful and friendly.
Walvis Bay is a very pleasant and safe (as is the adjacent holiday town of Swakopmund 20 km to the north) has everything needed for provisioning just a 20 minute walk into town. It also has the world famous high tidal lagoon/mud flats, home to countless seal colonies and flocks of pelicans and migrating sea birds.
As it was very wet, wet season the locals were advising against a trip to Etosha especially without a 4x4. But hiring these 4x4’s were prohibitively expensive and as our experience in Kruger had shown rental cars make the best 4x4 vehicles. So, we hired a VW Golf and decided to see if it was as good as the Kruger rental car we had (Toyoto Yaris) on the mud and gravel. As it happened we hit a dry patch and though some of the park roads were badly rutted we only had a few stretches of slithering and sliding on the tails of the thunderstorms.
The 800 km from Walvis Bay to the Westgate of Etosha is all paved and a leisurely two day drive with a Safari Camp stopover. The roads inside Etosha are dirt of which only a few were closed due to the rains. Being the wet season the Park was almost deserted and we saw only one other vehicle on our first day driving the western plains.
Our risk to go in the wet season was well worth it. Even though much of the game is hidden in the new green foliage of the scrub lands and a surplus of water means that the animals don’t collect at the standard waterholes. The savannah areas were lush and rewarded us with some amazing sights. All that you could wish for in a few days self drive Safari. Heads of big game, topped off with a pride of lions (10), three cheetahs all within a few meters of our car. Nonstop vista of the Etosha pan – to be seen to be believed – awesome – not a dust bowl as imagined but filled with water and teeming with flocks of migratory birds, flamingos as a long line on the horizon.
As usual budget constraints called us back to Matarua way too soon ending our time in Namibia, a place we should like to visit again.
A few days doping final provisioning, returning the car and preparing the boat saw an end to our African sojourn. On the 5th March we slipped our mooring and by dusk it was all but memories as the sand dunes slipped finally below the horizon.