Swakopmund (12-14)

Tuesday I headed to Swakopmund on the shuttle from Windhoek. I was ready to not be driving even though the whole trip was on a tar road. After ten busy days, I needed a day off. In Swakopmund I stayed with a family in their home (airbnb) for the first three nights. I got along well with the woman and her husband and enjoyed talking with them. It was nice to hang out with compatible people for a change. 

Then I moved, as the woman’s sister was coming, to another place that was quite unique for the last two nights. I had a really large, bright room with a tub and a rocking chair. I had to indulge in a bath on night.

Swakopmund is on the Atlantic coast with the ocean on one side and the dunes and desert on the other. Of course I needed to experience all three: dunes, desert, and ocean. It is where Namibians head to get out of the heat, as temperatures are much lower there—in the 70s most of the time.

Wednesday I ended out taking two tours to two of the destinations. Because I am one person, I have to join others who have booked, and, since both tours had other people booked I didn’t want to take a chance that the afternoon tour would be booked later in the week. So it was a full day. The morning tour was the living dunes. We went to the dunes just outside town with the goal of seeing the Little Five, five small animals that live in the dunes. We did very well, only missing a chameleon which apparently has been elusive recently. The vehicles stopped at certain places where the drivers/guides know an animal often hangs out. Then one man talked to us while the other two went scouting for the target animal. Since the early morning rain had erased any tracks, finding the animals was challenging. They looked for disturbances in the sand patterns. Since the first two animals are nocturnal, the sign of their underground site was a very small mound of sand. At our first stop, the guide dug a deep hole and then called us over. 

He then dug farther until he found the palmatto gecko, which he brought out for us to observe. It is translucent; so what is visible is its organs. It is web-footed to make digging easier. After showing us the gecko he put it back in the hole so it could dig in and return to sleep. All the animals they found and showed us were returned to where they were found.

Our next animal was the white lady spider, which is venomous; so the guide handled it very carefully with a hook at the end of a pole. When he found it, the spider was a lump in the sand because it was sleeping. But then it woke up and he got it to ”dance” for us before putting it back in its hole, as it, too, is nocturnal.

Then we saw two lizards—a shovel-snouted lizard 

and a wedge-snouted lizard. 

The former is also called a sand digging lizard because it uses its shovel-shaped snout to dig into the sand, which we watched it do.

They also found a skink for us to observe. It was fun to see the interesting patterns in the sand when it moved around.

They had a hard time finding a side winding adder, which is also quite poisonous. They hide in dollar plants, and the first one they search in had no snake. Later they found one. Its tail has a black tip that sticks out of the sand to lure other animals that think it is small food; then it kills and eats them.

Dollar plants are abundant. 













Their leaves are filled with water; so they provide water for some of the animals. The guide picked a small bunch and squeezed it so we could see the amount of water, which was surprising. 

When they get too dry, they drop their leaves and look dead.

It was really interesting to see and learn about all the animals. It was also fun to ride through the dunes on back trails.

In the afternoon I joined the living desert tour. We stopped several times to photograph views and to see special sites and plants. The first site is called the moon landscape and is a badlands landscape. 

As we were driving off road through the desert, the guide told us that some of the Mad Max movies were filmed there. 

The main special plant is the welwitschia, which is unique from this part of Namibia north into Angola. It can live up to 1000 years. The guide thought the ones we observed are 400-500 years old. 

The plant has a woody stem in the center and two leaves, one on each side. It looks like they have more leaves because they split as the plant grows. Because of the drought, the plants are very dry, and it was difficult to determine if a plant is male or female. 

On one plant we saw the welwitscha bugs that enable fertilization between plants. 
Later we stopped to see lichens, which were also very dry. The guide poured a small amount of water on them, and it was amazing how fast they filled out.

The guide pointed out white streaks of uranium in the rocks. It mined in the area. Namibia is the fifth highest uranium producing country in the world.

All in all it was a very fascinating and beautiful day in the dunes and desert.