Out of the desert and into the town. Urban living. It’s been a bit of a weird transition, switching from camp life, to having a fitted kitchen and walk-in shower. The fresh duvet and unlimited drinking water has been nice though! We’re staying in a town on the Skeleton Coast called Swakopmund, which feels a long way from the Africa we’ve been experiencing recently.

One of our guidebooks summed it up pretty well by saying that it’s like someone picked up a Baltic State sea side resort and dropped it on the wrong continent! The buildings are a kind of German design, from the towns origins, but it’s got more of an old America vibe to us. It’s winter of course down here in the southern hemisphere, so very much off season, and with a thick sea mist hugging the coast, we’ve had our big jackets on while walking the promenade. On our first day, we got as far as the harbour, where we stopped for drinks by the waters edge. It’s good value here, with two beers, two glasses of wine, a plate of king prawns, steak and chips, coming in at just over twenty quid .

Only just in land, the sun is still shining! On Monday, we drove north up the coast to Henties Bay.

The drive is a straight line up the coast, with sea one side of you and sand dunes on the other. Not an ideal place to get ship wrecked as even if you did reach land, there’s not much to save you between the two towns! There are quite a few wrecks though, which give the coast its name.

Henties Bay is not much to shout about, but we parked up outside the town and took a short ‘atmospheric’ walk along the misty coastline, through the changing coloured sands.

It’s easy to feel small here, especially when there’s nothing to gain any scale from.

Our big truck looked tiny on the horizon!

Back in the warmth of a Swakopmund cafe, we found some ‘snacks’ to keep us fuelled up for our ‘rest and recuperation’ phase of the expedition.

There was a blast of sunshine on Tuesday morning, which changed the vibe of the area considerably. This time we headed south to Walvis Bay to check out the Pink Flamingos.

The drive was sunny, but Walvis Bay had not escaped the sea mist. It’s a mostly industrial port, so held no great attraction for us except the vast volume of migrating birds – specifically Flamingo.

The coast is simply packed with them. Pelicans like it here too apparently, but we didn’t see any of them. The way the flamingos walk and feed is amazing to watch. Their knees bend the opposite way to ours and when the fly, their bright pink wings are quite a sight.

Today (Wednesday), our final day in Swakopmund, we were delighted to find the sun shining brightly as we left the house and walked down to the beach. We’d decided to have a car free day, as we’ve got plenty of driving ahead of us still. From the house we walked down to the beach and watched the waves in the warmth of the sun.

A short walk along the coast then got us to the main town.

For lunch, we decided to treat ourselves at ‘The Butcher & Brewer’ to try a classic Namibian steak, along with a flight of beers that had been brewed on sight. We had a whole terrace to ourselves and sat right by the waters edge looking out to sea while trying the drinks and food. There was plenty of both! The steak was 500g!

I had a coffee to finish the meal off, as we had no need to rush anywhere and we had the best seats in town. The whole experience was topped off when a pod of dolphins swam into the bay!

We walked off our enormous lunch with a visit to Crystal Museum. Absolutely fascinating. Imagine finding some of these while climbing in Namibia!

All in all, we’ve had just the rest we needed before setting back out into the desert tomorrow. Clothes are washed, bags re-packed and we’ve had plenty of food and sleep. Just food and diesel to get in the morning before we head to Spitzkoppe area and some remote desert living. As the sun set, we walked back to the beach to watch the light show…

Brilliant. Good to finally see the sun set over the Skeleton Coast…