Entering the Tropics!

After a brief stop at the loneliest sounding town in Africa “Solitaire” we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn on a very long day of driving on super bumpy roads getting what is referred to as an “African Massage”.

Not quite the tropical landscape I expected but Swakopmund, a little north of Walvis Bay was a lovely little oceanside resort town built by the Germans during colonisation in the early 1900s. Buildings are very Bavarian and German is still widely spoken.  

The dark history of Swakopmund that we uncovered at the very interesting museum told of the attempted genocide of the hereoro people (and other tribes also) and Germany’s first use of Concentration Camps where hundreds of thousands Hereoro people were forced into hard labour and died of torture malnutrition and disease. Interestingly while most of the museum featured information on wildlife and geology in both German and English, the history of colonisation and German atrocities were only in English. 

Found a very cool cafe for lunch and went to the Lighthouse restaurant for dinner on our 2nd night there. 

On Wednesday we were joined on our truck by a lovely family of 5 from Switzerland including 3 teenagers. (Menno, Sophie, Annalys, Tessa, Louis). Driving north towards Uis/Brandberg we continued our desert expedition along the stark Skeleton Coast that is littered with shipwrecks. 

We stopped along the way to trek 2.5km to the White Lady cave drawings – 5,000 years old. Also caught a glimpse of Namibias tallest mountain Brandberg that is 2600 metres high. Massively hot day and we were very grateful to arrive at our lodge at Uis.