10: Junkyard Joes

5.04.2016 – 5.04.2016 semi-overcast 23 °C + 31 °C

DSC_6234Namibia day today! Checked out and as our flight was not til 3pm we knew that we had a few hours to kill.. enough time to see some of Cape Town’s quintessential tourist spots that we still hadn’t gotten around to seeing.. First stop, the Companies Gardens. I never actually worked out which company but my red hot guess would be the Dutch East India Company. The Gardens occupy a goodlie number of blocks in the heart of the city and also house the Parliament building (apparently there are three in SA?), museums, art galleries, all of your cultural and old buildings all in one spot! Actually the parliament building is spectacular. Gorgeous Victorian building standing in the heart of luscious tropical gardens. Extremely nice!

DSC_6247From the Gardens we walked up to Bo Kaap. Bo Kaap was once the coloured area of Cape Town~ heavily influenced by Malay + Indian immigrants back in the 1800s. Today the town has retained its signature look of brightly painted workers cottages. In fact, Bo Kaap is today one of the top tourist spots to visit. I loved the bright coloured houses and was a little envious that it is highly unlikely we would ever have something similar in AU.. I mean who is going to paint their houses bright pink or purple in Sydney? When you have one by itself it looks positively garish but hundreds clustered together? Looks AWESOME!

DSC_6255Before we headed to the airport we did a pit stop in the shopping area of Cape Town to buy some supplies for our journey to Namibia. Then before we knew it we were saying good bye to Cape Town and hello Namibia!

We arrived into Windhoek (pronounced Vin-dook or Vind-hook- take your pick) around 4pm and were greeted at the airport by our tour company Sense of Africa. The best introduction I’ve ever had to a country and a tour. Janene the “greeter” took us through all the details of where we would be staying, where we would be driving, what we’d be doing etc~ you name it she took us through it, and then bundled us into a bus for the forty minute drive into Windhoek. I was pleasantly surprised as it started to bucket down on the way into town. Namibia is known for only getting rain 50 days a year and we were fortunate enough to see some rain. Roads actually started to surface flood it was raining that hard.. not sure if it was raining that hard or whether the drainage is that bad but it was fun!

Dinner for the evening was organised for Joes Brewhouse. Joes is apparently an institution here in Windhoek- it is the place where tourists go to eat dinner! Pretty eclectic place (is the only way to describe it)… reminds me of one big junk yard that has been turned into eating and drinking areas.  In fact, my guess is that in the early days you were required to bring a piece of junk with you when you dined at Joes! Windhoek is traditionally a German area so there was plenty of German dishes on the menu and plenty of beer! We were seated near the back of the restaurant where the feature was porcelain toilets stuck to the floor used as bar stools! Our area was also sporting a collection of farm implements, jagermeister bottles, old beer steins and a taxidermy hen roosting above our table.  An experience; Joes is! Welcome to Namibia Dunham’s!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *