Namibia (Walvis Bay) and Angola (Luanda)

May 30-June 2, 2024

We were supposed to have two stops in Namibia – unfortunately, the tender curse continued and heavy fog prevented any attempt to sail to the shore (and it was thick fog in the morning – with visibility under 50 feet). It would not have been safe for the tender boats to play “Marco Polo” between the shore and the ship, so we continued up the coast to Walvis Bay – where a clear day welcomed us. We even knew our guide was outside waiting when Brandee, one of my friends onboard, was standing next to us in the immigration line -she received a photo from shore showing her name was next to ours on the guide’s placard (she had an afternoon tour with the same tour operator).

Our guides took us to the flamingo beach (which was less than a mile from the ship) – where a flamboyance covered the shallow waters feeding. We continued to a park, where even more flamingoes enjoyed the brackish and freshwater shallow lakes along with several other birds (our guides were not birders – when I saw a black headed plover I asked about it and the guide called it a “baby seagull” – I laughed and said “no- I’ll look it up later” – it was a blacksmith plover.)

Then onward to the city of Swakopmond – a German city known for its late 19th century architecture. We walked along a pier, where some seals fed near the shore (and seagulls tried to steal their catch) and then to a really interesting museum on the history and early settlement of the area.

A quick trip to the pink lakes where salt was being harvested from seawater and then back to the ship where the guide had to pick up his afternoon tour – 30 minutes late.

We continued on to the local mall where the cruise shuttle dropped off passengers not on tours. It was a nice mall, and we found a couple of things for the upcoming Rocky Horror theme night Liam helped plan.

A couple of sea days later we arrived in Luanda, Angola.

Let’s just say of the experience that Angola does not have much of an established tourism industry. No online tours fit with our ship’s port hours so I messaged a local tour company to see if they had anything – they created one for the ship in under two hours. In 2 days they had three mini-buses full of passengers. A little problem – they did not have enough English speaking guides. On our bus, our tour guide Alice was the office manager who learned the day before she would be a tour guide and given some notes. We found out that educated Angolans know about as much about their own country and historic sites as most Americans know about our own. The day before arriving in ports, the cruise ship does a “destination trivia” about the upcoming country: Tanya, one of my trivia team mates and I had studied and found ourselves answering a lot of the questions Alice couldn’t answer. She was lovely and her English was very good. The “City Tour” drove us over an hour outside of the city to the Miradouro da Luna – a beach overlook with red earth.

It was pretty. It was also Sunday, and open.

Returning to the city, we stopped at The Slavery Museum at a site where Africans were placed on slave ships to be sent to the Americas.

Then, back to the city to see The Fort (also a military museum).

The debate about lunch ended with us taken to the mall (yes – another mall) – where she said they could take credit cards.

Kind of, it turns out – not American ones and none of the shops in the food court took US $. Luckily, we found a coffee shop with sandwiches on the first floor that would take US currency, and I had a really good grilled cheese sandwich. We were supposed to have one more stop but at this point everyone was ready to return to the ship.

History lesson:

Namibia: The Namib Desert reaches the sea in most of Namibia, making it less interesting for European colonizers, with the exception of the natural deep harbor at Walvis Bay. Claimed by the Dutch, then the English, it was eventually claimed by Germany in 1884, and the region named German South West Africa. After WWI, South African troops took over the area, and continued to administer it as South West Africa until a UN resolution in 1989 released the region from South African control and gained independence under the name Namibia in 1990. Under their new Constitution, apartheid is not allowed, but land reform has been slow because the farmers need to be willing to sell, and land is expensive.

Angola: It is one of the most expensive cities in the world for an Expat or foreign visitor. How can this be in a country where the average monthly income is the equivalent of $250? Because housing where expats and oil executives is in short supply, and foreign goods are heavily taxed. It is also one of the only places in Africa where the Portuguese discovered it – and successfully defended the land from other European powers, making it the second largest Portuguese speaking population in the world. The first Portuguese settlement was Luanda (now the capital) in 1575. They quickly established a slave trade from Angola to Brazil (if you remember my history section from Brazil – you’ll remember that I’d mentioned that Brazil was the #1 “importer” of African slaves). The area was briefly held by the Dutch from 1641-49 while Portugal was controlled by Spain, but once self governance resumed the Portuguese sent a large naval force to retake the colony. In 1951, Angola was made an official province of Portugal, but even by 1960, not a single University had been established. With rising unrest, conflict between the native population and Portuguese owners increased. Independence came after a coup in Lisbon, bringing in a Portuguese government that agreed to release all colonies. Angola became an independent country on November 11, 1975.