West Coast

  The West Coast consists of paradoxes. The Atlantic Ocean is immediately to your left and the Namib Naukluft Desert to your right. The days are scorching hot and the nights are freezing. Parts of the coastline are completely isolated and a few Kilometres away are tourist traps.
We spent a few days traveling around the area between Willievis Bay (to those not in the Rock Rabbit: Walvis Bay) and Swakopmund, learning to love the former and dislike the latter. We explored some of the sights and sounds, collected salt on the salt flats; climbed Dune 7; drove through an unexpected Moonscape of intertwining rocky hills and valleys; visited the ancient Welwitschia miriabilis and saw the fragile lichen fields where the Ox-Wagon tracks of the first settlers are still clearly visible.
Wanting to get away from the damp, windy coast for a while we spent some time exploring the gravel desert with all its desolate beauty and spectacularly adapted wildlife. We looked for snakes and scorpions and went on night hikes to try and track down Bat Eared foxes. Though we were only occasionally successful, we learnt a lot and had a blast doing it.
As Mike is along on this stretch of the trip Chris and I are thoroughly enjoying the vegetarian, or to be exact, pescetarian diet. However, living on the coast for a few days we all enjoyed the fish and seafood on offer. We discovered that we much prefer fishing for fresh water fish, as we actually manage to catch some of them  and that finding muscles north of Henties Bay is almost impossible.