Archive for ‘Eleanor’

Blog posts by Eleanor

The Skeleton Coast

*** Delayed Post – internet is not always available in Namibia ***

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After Swakopmund we drove north, and went up the Skeleton Coast. It is called this because there are lots of skeletons, animals and ships.

There were lots of shipwrecks marked on our map, but most of them have disappeared. There was one ship that we saw that was still obviously a ship. It was wrecked in 2008, and was called the Zeila. It was a fishing boat.

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Some of the shipwrecks only had a few bits of metal left. On one you could see the engine.

We got stuck in the sand and Mummy and Daddy had to do some digging. We also saw some wild african dogs. There were lots of animal tracks.  We thought they might have been made by hyena, jackals and wild dogs!

 

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Swakopmund

*** Delayed Post – internet is not always available in Namibia ***

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After Walvis Bay, we went to Swakopmund. Daddy’s knee was a bit better. He gave his crutches back to the hospital.

We did a drive called The Welwitschia Plains – A Scenic Drive. To begin with, we couldn’t see very far because there was a sea fog. The sea fog is important because it gives water to the plants.  It looks like there is nothing growing in the desert, but when we looked closely, the ground was covered in lichens. We gave them some drops of water from our water bottles, and they opened up. The lichens grow really slowly, less than 1mm a year. It was important not to stand or drive on them.

We also saw 2 different bushes. One is called the dollar bush because its leaves look like money. The other was called the inkbush.

We drove through an area called the moon landscape. It had lots of furrows caused by erosion of the ground. We also saw a stripe of dolerite rock.

Then we went to see a really old plant. It is more than 1,500 years old! It is called a Welwitschia Mirabilis. It looks like it has lots of leaves, but actually it only has 2! This was easier to see on the smaller plants. The leaves get all shredded. I thought they were cool.

 

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Walvis Bay

We drove a very bumpy road to get to Walvis Bay. On the way we stopped at a place called Solitaire and I had the best apple pie with cream.

Then we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn.

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We stayed in Walvis Bay for a few nights. Daddy went to hospital to get his knee x-rayed. Luckily it wasn’t broken. Genevieve and I liked the campsite because it had a really big playground. I liked the fireman’s pole!

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We did a walk along the lagoon and saw lots and lots of flamingos. Then we saw pelicans.

Genevive and I did some flamingo yoga!

 

 

 

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Sand Dunes

We drove to Sesriem. This is where the big sand dunes are.  On the way we saw lots of animals, but we didn’t get great photos…

We saw lots of sand dunes. We climbed one called Dune 45. Every step I took it felt like I was sinking in the sand. We saw lots of bugs and it was fun watching them walk around. They left tracks all over the dune.

Then we drove to Big Daddy. To get to it we had to go on a sandy road and the Taniwha almost got stuck.  But Daddy aired the tyres down and we kept going.

The next morning we got up really early to get to the dunes before sunrise. Daddy fell over and hurt his knee.  I climbed the dune all by myself! (Mummy had gone ahead to get photos of the sunrise).

I had to tip sand out of my shoes!

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Ghost Town!

Today was a fun day. First we went to a ghost town called Kolmanskop. This used to be a real town, but now the desert is reclaiming it. Lots of the rooms were filled with sand. The town was there because of diamonds. We learnt about diamond smuggling. One person tried to hide diamonds in his shoes. One person fired diamonds out of the area with a cross bow. Some people put diamonds on homing pigeons. But this wasn’t so good because the diamonds were heavy and made the birds tired, so they didn’t fly all the way home.

After this we went to Agate Beach for lunch. We did a big walk along the beach and found lots of pretty stones. We think some of them are agates. An agate is a semi-precious stone. They look pretty when they are polished.

After this we drove back to Aus and we saw horses on the Garub Pan.

We stayed at a nice campsite and saw lots of stars. I can recognise Orion’s Belt and the Southern Cross, with pointers. I could also see the Milky Way. There were so many stars!

 

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