To the Moon and Back, Walvis Bay, Namibia

Things on the Viking Neptune are like a moving target.  Because we were delayed getting out of Cape Town, we had to skip our stop in Lüderitz.  And that meant that our arrival in Walvis Bay was at 3 PM, which meant that all the shore excursions that were previously scheduled weren’t going to happen.  So the shore excursion people came up with the idea that there would be one big grand outing for the whole ship. As you can imagine, this was a last-minute idea that was put together quite rapidly.

So where did we go? We went to the moon and back.  The first thing we had to do was go through immigration, which isn’t too bad since they do it on the ship.  To start the adventure, we were entertained by some young people on the dock.  Somehow the shore ex folks arranged for every moving vehicle in Walvis Bay to meet us and take all 400 of us about 60 km out into the Naukluft National Park, a desert landscape like you have never seen. This area of Namibia is mountains, valleys, sand dunes, flamingos, pelicans, seals and an occasional oasis.

We traveled on a rickety bus that had lots of leg room.  We had undoubtedly the worst ride so far on this trip. Why? Well, to begin with the roads in the park aren’t paved. We did about half our traveling on completely unpaved gravel, rock and sandy roads that created a huge dust cloud as we went along. We initially passed the huge sand dune that we had so much fun playing on a couple of years ago, but we didn’t stop there. We stopped at an overlook to view the “moon area“ that was really magnificent. Michael said he had never seen anything quite like it. I was just happy to stand and not be jostled around on the bus ride. The bus continued on through an oasis to the place where we spent a couple of hours.

The ship really did a fine job. With very little notice, they engaged several tour operators, and by the time we got there, they had ice cold beer, wine, soft drinks and cheese and cracker platters all over the place. So, we didn’t starve on the moon. Beverly planted herself in her little unique seat while I decided to hike up the nearest hill because I thought I’d get a better view. When I got to the top, my view was of a higher sand dune, so I had to hike up to that one. When I got to the second higher sand dune, my view was a third higher sand dune, and so I had to hike up to the top of that one. Fortunately, that was the last and the views were quite spectacular. It took me a good half hour to get back down because climbing down hills is always tougher than climbing up. Fortunately, I got down in time for the sunset, which was quite amazing and as soon as that was done, we all headed back to the bus for an hour and 15 minute extremely bumpy ride back to the ship, and to a late dinner.