10.04.2016 – 10.04.2016  32 °C

Early start today as we were off to see the Walvis Bay Dolphins + Seals. And did we see some seals! A huge colony live off the spit at Walvis Bay.. must have been thousands. But I digress.

Day started early but we actually didn’t board the boat out until almost 10am (we were supposed to depart at 9.. my sea sick tablet had half worn off by the time we got going). A cruise ship had pulled in the night before and the almost two thousand strong crowd of tourists seemed to descend on Walvis Bay for an excursion out in the bay… Just our luck! While we waited we decided to sign up to another trip (in the afternoon ) this time in a 4WD down the coast to Sandwich Harbour. This trip we hoped would take us into the heart of the sand dunes around Walvis Bay.

We finally boarded the boat and headed out in the thick fog out of Walvis Bay out to the seal colony. Almost as soon as we had left the dock a seal actually jumped on board! In fact, by the time our trip was over we had two different seals cavorting with us on board the boat! These are wild seals that know if they jump on board they will get fed! The first seal to jump on was named Bobby and he knew to walk straight from the back to the front of the boat and how to get the fish out of the guide’s hands… Nuts! Bobby is so tame that the guide was able to walk around the boat and let us tourists feed him… crazy! Whilst Bobby was being fed we were followed by another seal this time a baby one called Simba. He too came right up to the front of the boat waiting for his fish!! Super cute.

Meanwhile we were on our way out to the colony— Walvis Bay is currently home to an oil rig and two oil exploration ships all of which were docked in the bay. Apparently the price of oil is too low for them to dig so it is cheaper for the oil company to temporarily park the rig and exploration ships in the harbour! First time I’ve ever seen an off shore oil rig up close and they are impressive structures!

Finally made our way out to the colony and what should join us but a pelican! This one is named Gaga (after Lady Gaga) and she was super tame. Even allowing the guide to put his hand into her beak!!! So needless to say but the seals took a back seat for a few minutes to this enormous pelican. Actually, she hitched a ride on the boat and stayed with us for ages riding on the rail of the boat!!!

A seal colony is a pretty impressive thing.. You can see them playing out in the water- mucking around cleaning their fur, splashing each other.. and the ones on the shore are all sleeping on top of each other in a big long pile.. They really are awesome animals.. Biggest downside is the smell… Seals eat fish and we all know what fish smells like when it is rotten……..

We finally headed back and we happened to see a Sun Fish (or as they are called in the local language Mola- Mola).. The Sun Fish are pretty impressive fish.. they seem to be the size of a small dinner table (well at least the size of my dinner table) and they sort of float along looking for stuff to eat. We didn’t get a great look but I at least got to appreciate how big they are!

After arriving back at shore we sat around for another hour waiting for our driver to take us out to the dunes. During lunch (which was on board the boat) we got chatting to a couple of British tourists who were travelling on board the cruise ship. As it turned out they happened to be our companions on board the 4WD trip so we all sat around and bitched about how long it took to find us a guide! Eventually we got going and in my view, the sand dunes were the highlight of the day! Almost as soon as we left Walvis Bay we were out in the dunes on our way to Sandwich Harbour.. OMG.. did we have fun! Our driver really hammed it up with us going up and down sand dune after sand dune.

Craziness ensued with us going forwards and backwards down some real monster sand hills.. Seriously, the sand hills outside Walvis are just as big as Soussevlei but these ones aren’t protected by NP so we were bashing the hell out of these mountains.. I haven’t had this sort of fun for a long time. I was squealing and yippee-ing down half of them!!! Poor old Mum was up the front holding on for dear life to the Jesus bar (I later found out from her that she wasn’t holding on as she was worried the Jesus bar would snap off in her hands!!! I have no idea how she did each and every sand hill as she was shot gun—we were mercifully right up the back so last ones over and last ones up the other side)

We never made it to Sandwich Harbour and to be honest I don’t think I care that I never got there.. we got as far as we could with the tide slowly coming up and spent most of our time dune bashin’  which is the most fun. I did take some shots over the dunes and I’ll leave it to the reader to say what they think.. My thoughts? More sand dune magic!!!!