Walvis Bay, Namibia

 April 7 & 8, 2025

"Man is the head of the family, woman the neck that turns the head." ~ Namibian proverb

Our guide today was Barbara, a Namibian of German ancestry and part of the 6% white minority in the country. She says it's a peaceful society with no racial tension or internal strife. Since many places in Africa have a history of or ongoing civil unrest, it's unique in that. 

Among the black population, there are many different tribes and language groups. There are even three tribes who live completely off the grid with no contact with others. They do a smattering of planting, hunting and gathering and move to other areas as the rainy or dry seasons dictate. 

Barbara says the going rate for a wife is 6 cows. That's down from the 11 cow bride-price in South Africa. In an interesting twist, in Namibia a man may have as many wives as he can support, but the first wife chooses the second, the second picks the third, and so on...

Our excursion took us to Flamingo Bay, a very exclusive stretch of beach where normally there are 56,000 flamingos. However, it's mating season, and the favored mating grounds are 150 km away. There were only a few birds still on the beach, the elderly, the injured, etc., who couldn't make the trip. But we got a fairly close view of them and enjoyed watching them unfurl their wings to expose the black and pink feathers. Otherwise, they were very pale because they don't eat brine shrimp. They eat plankton.

Then we drove into the desert between an avenue of palm trees 11 km long. A local businessman had lost his son in an accident on that highway. In his grief, he decided to plant these palms in his son's memory. (Unfortunately, we were unable to get a good photo of these rows of tangible evidence of a father's pain. They are a beautiful memorial. The roads are ...what's a charitable way to say it?...an opportunity for Africa to give us a massage. No way to get our phones to focus as we jiggled along.)

Our destination was a place where we could access Namibia's famous sand dunes. 

It's hard to walk on inclined sand. Your feet sink in with each step and you slide back a bit. Surprisingly, we were able to make it more than half way up the largest dune. But then I realized this was a "bear went over the mountain" moment. All we'd see from the top is more sand dunes. Time to take a "made it half way up" win.

According to our resident geologist, the Namibian dunes are the product of the erosion of the African escarpment that rises from sea level. They are constantly shifting and there is one that actually has a star shape because of the changing prevailing wind. 

We've seen so many weird and wonderful things on this trip. This was yet another. We are so very blessed.