This day was a great day to play ‘tourist’ as we headed down for a boat ride on Walvis Bay. My first thoughts were not too positive as I am not a big fan of touristy type activities (none of this trip had been typical touristy in any way). To my pleasant surprise, the boat ride was really interesting and fun.

The ride started out with our guide telling us not to be disturbed if a pelican or seal happened to stop by our boat to say hi. I thought he was just joking - until a large pelican happened to drop onto the deck and started wandering around. And then after a while a seal hoped on to join the fun. By the way, turns out an adult human male can make more noise than a human female when such seal tries to climb into their lap :)

The tour company had not trained these animals. But the pelicans and seals were used to people and had gotten used to finding fish anywhere it might happen to be. The animals, of course, didn’t argue with the handouts such as our boat guide conveniently supplied from a handy bucket of fish.

It was really interesting seeing these creatures up close and being able to touch them. The great white pelicans have beautiful colors in their faces and necks. And the seal really had slick and shiny oily fur.

We also had dolphins escorting our boat for a ways plus we caught a quick glimpse of a whale (very lucky as the whale migration through these waters was pretty much over). This one whale had stayed behind just to say hi to us!

The short video clip below unfortunately did not capture what was happening above the guide. As he was holding up the fish for the seal to ask for, a pelican just happened to fly by and grab it from his hands.

There are a lot of ships in this harbor. They varied from small boats to large vessels such as cargo carriers and oil rig maintenance ships. Unfortunately due to the pandemic and other reasons, many of the larger vessels had been stranded in the port for quite some time. It seems that port access and ship maintenance is relatively cheap in Walvis Bay so many ships anchored there until they had business to go elsewhere.

An interesting note is that Namibia has very, very few off shore oil rigs. But Namibia is well know for being one of the largest oil rig maintenance locations in the world due to local expertise and lower costs. In fact, oil rigs are floated down to this area from as far away as Norway for overhauls.

The outer part of the Bay is protected by a stretch of sand ending up at Pelican Point. It is home to many seabirds including of course pelicans and flamingos. It is also home to huge seal colonies. Even further north along the coast, some of the largest Cape Fur Seal colonies in the world exist.

Halfway out to the point there is a lighthouse and building. It turns out that the building has been converted into the rather exclusive Pelican Point Lodge. A great place to reserve if you want to show off to business customers or other money people.

On the way back to shore, we were served all kinds of really good food. Some of it of course included things like oysters (not for me) along with many other tasty treats. There was a group of very fun travel agents who were exploring the area together. One of the girls had never had an oyster so after just a bit of wine, she tried it. Her face was something to remember (probably how I looked when I tried one). She and I mutually agreed that neither of us would ever have one again!

Once back on land, we headed back to town. A brief stop allowed us to watch a bunch of flamingos fishing in shallow beach water.

We had the afternoon off so I wandered a bit and enjoyed both the German architecture along with the beautiful landscaping along the beach front.

A few comments about the food in Swakopmund - great selection and very tasty, something for everyone. Our small group wandered out onto the strip for a very filling lunch in a beautiful restaurant as we sat on the patio enjoying the surf with our food.

Our guide had also mentioned a local white fish called a kingklip that he insisted we must all try. With great anticipation we headed out for dinner in a restaurant that was actually an old tug boat. The atmosphere was very unique as we climbed the stairs up to our private room which had great views (it was the pilot’s room on the tug). However when we tried to order the wonderful kingklip, our waiter informed us that due to the limited number of tourists (pandemic impact), they only had limited amounts of this fish. In fact there was just enough left for one person! Being gentlemen (cough), we let our guide from our travel company from the States enjoy it. Regardless, everything we had for dinner was fantastic. And we did get a chance to taste this legendary fish at a later point in our trip.