2025-10-31 West Africa Cruise: Nov 22 (Saturday)

On our 2019 world cruise we visited Walvis Bay with a tour to the massive sand dunes along the coast. This visit we took a tour that included a short drive along Walvis Bay waterfront.

There were a few flamingos in the low tide mud flats.

Then we headed inland to two national parks, Namib-Naukluft and Dorob. Salt pans along the way.

The route was on salt roads…that seemed like regular asphalt but are made primarily of packed sand. And we travel past miles and miles of sand dunes.

We also saw a pipe that takes water to the uranium mines. It has to be pumped a very long distance.

The first park we hit was the Namib-Naukluft. The scenery on the drive was dramatic and beautiful. And we stopped at a viewpoint to get some great views.

We had a stop where there was a concentration of plant life…a variety of lichen and flowering desert plants. Some were quite interesting and beautiful.

Everyone was interested in taking photos of the plants.

Then we drove further in to Dorob National Park…more dramatic and stark scenery.

At the end of the road we stopped to see some Welwitchia plants. A very interesting plant that is endemic to the arid, coastal Namib desert. It has only two leaves that grow continuously. The plant can live for over 1000 years but the leaves, while huge, are continuously worn down by the winds and sand so the length is limited. It gets its moisture from the fog in the area; it almost never rains here.

The plants stem

There were a lot of bugs on the plants. Our guide said that the bugs are required for the plant to reproduce.

We were also treated to a demonstration of singing rocks. While some cultures use drums of horns to communicate over long distances, the local indigenous people used rocks. And this particular rock, when hit with another rock, makes a ringing sound. The ringing sound is due to the high iron content in the rocks.