Pat and Norm's World Cruises and other adventures

December 14

Last night was the lighting of the last candle of Hanukkah.  I am not sure that I mentioned there was a candle lighting each night (with lights, no candles allowed on the ship), and they had latkes, jelly doughnuts and other assorted foods.  It always took place in the Insignia lounge at 6:30.  Here are some pictures:

This menorah is the one at the reception desk

And we may not have the “elf on the shelf” but we do have the elf on the tree!

Today we booked a private tour with Ellen Stokes and 5 others to the Kakum National Park and Canopy Walkway and the Cape Coast and Elmina Castles.

We were again greeted by local dancers, and then we met our guide for the day, Blankson, who was just a delight.  We were only 7 as one of our group wasn’t feeling well today and decided to stay on the ship.

The trip there took over 2 hours, some on good highways but the road into the park was really bumpy.  We were saying if you had kidney stones, they would have been shaken loose! Everything was covered in dirt along the way due to the north trade winds in the dry season – harmmatan. Much of the country, especially in rural areas, has electricity rationing – called dum sol, off/on.

The forest and especially the canopy walkway was amazing.  The park spans 138 square miles and is one of the remaining vestiges of Ghana’s diminishing rainforest.  Blankson said that logging has now been outlawed so they hope that the forest will remain.  For the local people, the forest is the physical, spiritual and cultural home for the gods and spirits that dwell in its sacred trees, rivers, stones and animals.

The canopy walkway is actually 7 walkways suspended 100 feet above the ground.  It was really amazing to be up that high looking down into the forest, and there were also many trees even higher than us.  As we hiked through the forest  on the Kuntan Trail, we heard about some of the medicinal values of the forest.

Really??

Peter and Carol

Ellen and Norm

Blankson

Sherry and Norm

After we spent about 2 hours hiking, we went to the Kokodo Guest House for lunch. We had a wonderful array of African food, from small lobsters to  yam balls, plantains, a rice dish, fish, stir fried vegetables and more.  Norm and some of the rest of the group sampled the local beer.  Blankson took a plate for the bus driver – even though we invited him to eat with us, he would not.  I guess they have a division in the way they interact with tourists.

I saw another iguana!

We then traveled to the Cape Coast Castle.  Along the way, we heard a lot about the country and its struggles with the economy.  They are largely agricultural with cocoa being the second largest export, it employs 30-40 percent of the economy.  On the way back to port, Blankson bought us each a chocolate bar, even one for Lauri, who missed the tour!

The castle really is more like a fort built by the Dutch in 1637 and captured by the Swedes in 1652.  It was later sold to the English and named Cape Coast Castle.  It has a terrible history as a prison for slaves who were held by the thousands in small, dark dungeons before they were taken through the “door of no return” to the ships that supplied the slave trade.  The stories were horrible, of people dying and left for days, sexual abuse and drowning of pregnant women, etc.

Now, when you pass through the door of no return, the harbor is full of fishing boats, and is a beautiful scene.  We also saw many men repairing nets.

Our last stop was the Elmina Castle, where we ran into a lot of traffic, so didn’t actually tour it, just drove through the town and photographed it from afar.  This one was built by the Portuguese. When we asked why it was so busy in the town, Blankson told us it was because it is a Monday and there is no fishing on Tuesday so people are at the markets stocking up. He says that Tuesdays the fishing gods get to rest!

The Elmina Castle

And other sights around Elmina…

We made it back to the ship just in time, we had a safety drill at 5:15 and didn’t even have time to go back to our rooms to get our life jackets!

December 4

After our exciting seal, pelican and dolphin adventure, we had a short time to relax and get ready for our special world cruiser event – Dinner at Swakop River Canyon.

We were picked up at the pier at 6:30 by 6 passenger off road type minivans.  We rode with Marilyn and Charlie and Stephanie and Vick.  Our driver was Lawrence and we called him Lawrence of Namibia.  He is a psychologist who is now semi retired and does this tourism job to keep busy.  He was fun!

It took about 1 1/2 hours to drive to the canyon past the large sand dunes in the Namib desert (more about that later).  The Canyon has been likened to a moonscape with its unusual rock formations and dry riverbeds seared into the landscape by the glaring sun. Sunset is the most stunning time of day to visit the canyon as the fading light casts dramatic shadows across the stark environment.

When we arrived, the sky was pink and the rock formations were studded with hundreds of luminaries – so beautiful!  There were drummers and dancers and even camels to greet us and many small fire pits.  The wine flowed freely and we had time to explore the beautiful table settings before dinner.

For dinner, we had a buffet with everything from asparagus that is grown on desert farms here, to grilled garlic and peri peri prawns.  There were 4 different types of salads, West African Chicken and Peanut stew, Oxtail Lesotho Style, Namibian Venison Kebabs, Herbed Linefish Fillet, Egyptian Koshari with Salsa, Marrow, Peppers and Corn, Gratinated Potato and Butternut Bake, fresh (wonderful) bread with Sherry Trifle, Fresh Fruit Salad, Chocolate Mousse and Bread and Butter Pudding with Vanilla Sauce.  Needless to say, no one went hungry!  Our table for 10 included Candace and Rodney and the other Marilyn with her husband, Don as well as the 6 of us who traveled in together.  We had a great time.  We were entertained by singers and torch dancers and some of us even joined in the dancing (without the torches).  I know that my photos won’t do it justice but the scene was just magical.  When you ventured a bit away from the tables, the night sky was spectacular.

Beautiful evening.  We arrived back at the ship after 11 and needed to be up at 6 for our next adventure!

December 5

We left bright and early for our tour, Treasures of the Namib Desert by Off-Road Vehicle. We weren’t the only ones up early, our drivers/guides for the 5 vehcles were some of the same ones that took us to the dinner last night!  We had Oliver, but Lawrence was also in one of the other vehicles.  Today, we only had 4 people/vehicle and we were with Mary Ellen and Michael from Phoenix who are also on the world cruise with us.

Walvis Bay has 85,000 residents and is really growing.  If there is much poverty here, we didn’t see it.  We did see lots of small homes that people can buy for $25,000 US and Oliver said that they are trying hard to have people move into those.  There are also lots of huge homes, mostly along the waterfront. There is a log of uranium mining here and you see a large pipeline that brings water to the mines. (Yesterday Lawrence told us it was bringing German beer to the brothels – a little tour guide humor).

We traveled a different route than last night but our destination was more of the moonscape looking canyons in the Namib-Naukluft Park. We were driving in the Swakop River Valley  with the huge rock formations all around us.  This is the oldest desert in the world, from when the earth was formed, about 55 million years ago.  It also has the world’s highest shifting sand dunes.

One of our guides

We stopped to see the landscape in several places, then made a stop to see and learn about lichen which is a combination of algae and fungus.  We saw the lichen on rocks that they put in a circle for demonstration (you will kill it if you climb on it on the hills).  It looks dark, another variety red.  When our guide poured water on it, it turned green! Amazing to watch.

Later we saw the  Welwitschia mirabilis; a shrub-like plant, it grows two long strap-shaped leaves continuously throughout its lifetime. These leaves may be several meters long, gnarled and twisted from the desert winds. Two of the ones (male and female) we saw were determined by botanists to be about 500 years old. They are endemic to the Namib Desert.

After the drive and a few more stops in “moon valley” as it is called, we had a stop  at this “oasis” for mimosas and snacks and, of course, rest rooms.

Norm and Mary Ellen

These are the drawings to let you know men from ladies’ rooms, luckily they were modern and we didn’t need the bushes!

We then went on to the famous sand dunes – and had a stop at Dune 7.  Some of the dunes are about 980 feet high and 20 miles long. Amazing to move through the desert and see the rocks which consist of many types including quartz and volcanic, and then the sand dunes all surrounded by the flat, sandy desert with its low shrubs. In the river valley there are also occasional strips of green trees which get their water from underground sources.

These pictures are mostly to show you the scale.. how high those dunes actually are!

While the air was cool, the sand was hot and we didn’t have the time to climb to the top. They had a sign that said “no sandboarding” although we know that it has been done in the past.

After the dunes, our last stop was at the lagoon in Walvis Bay where several thousand flamingos stay most of the year. It is the largest habitat for flamingos in the world. They leave and fly to Etosha in northwest Namibia to breed and it is thought that is because the water is more shallow there and also warmer.  Then they return here to the lagoon. The greater flamingo is more white while the lesser flamingo is more pink.  I love to see them fly because of the colorful wings.

A great evening and day.  In the afternoon we have a face to face inspection, hand in our passports and then have 2 days at sea on our way to Luanda, Angola.  On Monday we have another special dinner in Polo for the world cruise travelers.  And, by the way, we are on day 151 which means less than 30 days to go.  Hard to believe and it will be hard to leave!

December 4

We arrived in Walvis Bay around 10 AM this morning.  While we were having our breakfast on the way in to the port, we saw many seals cavorting in the water just off the side of the ship.  A real show during our breakfast!

Norm was a bit under the weather yesterday and spent most of the day napping while I went out exploring, but he was feeling much better today. It is surprisingly cool and refreshing, so we will bring layers on our trip.

Walvis Bay is rimmed by the Namib Desert and it boasts a huge natural lagoon that atttracts hundreds of thousands of birds, including flamingos, pelicans and migratory species.   The flamingo flock is the largest in the whole of Southern Africa.

The town was snatched by the British years before the German colonists could get their hands on it.  It waa then part of South Africa for years and was transferred to Namibia in 1994.

Our excursion was a dolphin and seal cruise. We took a small van for a short ride to the Walvis Bay Yacht Club where we boarded our boat for the cruise.  Before we all got on board, a seal beat us to it, and he stayed for the first part of the journey.  That was certainly unexpected! Our guide called him Nicholas and said he often joins in the fun.

We saw many seals in the water as we made our way out to Pelican Point.  We learned that they lie on their backs with one flipper extended as a “solar panal” to absorb the heat into their bodies as the water is very cold here. When they are sleeping, they rest on their backs in the water and join the flippers together forming a kind of sail which allows them to drift in a circle vs being washed out to sea or onto land!

We saw pods of dolphin, including mothers and babies and learned that most are Atlantic bottlenose dolphins, the same kind that we see on Long Beach Island. There are also heavyside dolphins here but we didn’t see those.  We were told that if we drink the “coffee” the dolphins might come.. the coffee was sherry and it was delicious.  Still no heavyside dolphins though!

They do a lot of oyster farming here and the oysters are quite big due to the cold water. The oyster farms look like big steel drums set a few feet apart with these baskets hanging from the nets between the barrels.

My friends know how much I love pelicans, well we got up close and personal with them as they came and sat on the boat as we cruised in the bay.  I must have hundreds of pictures of them, but here are just a few.  Yes, I did get that close!!  They are beautiful.

We went to Peilcan Point where we learned that coastal Namibia has about 2 million seals, and approximately 60,000 live on Pelican Point.  Due to sand bars in the area, we couldn’t get close enough for good pictures, but the coastline is covered with them and there are so many in the water too.  We saw huge groups of flamingos, and some in flight.  We spotted many other types of birds, there are 4 varieties of cormorants and 9 species of terns found here.  And, jackals and hyenas also live here and do kill some of the baby seals.

You can’t really tell but these are all seals

Our guide telling jokes

Oil rig which is unused now that the price of oil is down

Lighthouse at the point

We heard that Namibia made a deal with the Russians about fishing rights. They have a 35 year right to fish in the waters and it hasn’t been a very good deal for the Namibians.  Our guide says that there is an inbred feature in Africans – a pocket in the back – so there is a lot of corruption and greed.

On the way back, we had a “picnic” of oysters, champagne, and lots of snacks and sweets. People who like oysters said they were some of the best they have had.

Tonight the world cruisers have a special event, an open air dinner at Swakop River Canyon.  And tomorrow we will go by off road vehicle into the Namib Desert, so watch for my next post.  I hear we can ski down Dune 7!