We enjoyed some awesome fresh seafood at a funky little place called the Ocean Basket and then wandered around the town to see what Swakopmund was all about. Being a former German settlement, many of the buildings had a European feel to them, and we noticed German street names, German pubs, German food in the grocery store, and lots of German visitors. Every time a local guy hassled us trying to sell us something, they always asked if we were German.
The town has excessively wide streets - four lanes plus a curb-side parking land, even off the main drag - yet the town was virtually dead. Most of the shops are closed on Sundays, so it was pretty quiet everywhere we went. The beach is wide and sandy, and some crazy people were even swimming (we were wearing fleeces!). Locals had set up along the beachside boulevard to sell their carved wooden masks, statues, necklaces, artwork, beautiful wooden bowls, and woven baskets. There was a gorgeous wood carving of some intertwined abstract giraffes that would be awesome to put in a corner at home, but how on earth would you ship it home? I do want to buy some canvas artwork while we are in Africa, as that's easy to roll up and send home. But we still have 5 weeks to find just the right one.
We went back to the same place as last night for dinner to try some of the pizza that other people had, which looked really good. It was - and cheap! Pizza for two people, bottled water, and dessert was barely 100 Namibia dollars, or about $12.50 Canadian. Definitely a far cry from the $35 mediocre dinners we were having in London not so long ago!
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a day off must have been mucho appreciated after all those early mornings and long drives. hard to imagine a german settlement in the middle of Namibia. Did they ooohm paa paa there?
ReplyDelete(remember, you can always buy your wood carvings at disney world, since they are equally authentic ;)