Seals on a Boat!

Along the Atlantic coastline of Namibia, two vastly different ecosystems live side by side. In the ocean, frigid currents from Antarctica create fog and nutrient-rich waters that give life to numerous fish, seals, whales and dolphins. Journey inland, by less than a mile, and you land in the midst of the vast Namib desert, which runs the length of the coastline and can stretch up to 100 miles inland. In other words, the Namib desert is a giant beach, 30-100 miles deep.

My girlfriend Carolyn and I arrived at Swakopmund and Walvis Bay, the largest towns on the coast and just 30 kilometres (about 20 miles) apart from each other. We stayed in Swakopmund, a touristy town, noted for its Germanic architecture. Walvis Bay, by contrast, is an important industrial town and houses a deep-water commercial port. The first morning, we left our shabby backpackers lodge headed to Walvis for a harbor cruise.

We cruised out of the Walvis Bay Yacht Club in a motorized catamaran that could accommodate 30-40 people. Our captain was Archie, a grizzled Namibian sailor. His first mate Jackson, who was from a town not far from where I had done my teaching. Jackson was surprised to chat with me in Oshiwambo as we tooled around the harbour!
Just a few minutes out of the dock, Jackson opened a box of fish to entice the seals. Several swam in the wake of the boat as you can see in the video below. Although these Cape Fur Seals weigh between 250-500 lbs, they can swim amazingly fast through the water. Next, one of the seals decided that he wanted a closer look at his fellow mammals on the boat. He launched himself from the water onto a small platform on the rear deck of the boat. From there, he hoisted himself up on his giant front flippers, put the flippers on the edge of the boat deck, and then clambered into the main cabin!



Three different seals came on deck during the tour, and while they were indeed looking for fish, they were also curious about the humans on the boat. They allowed us to touch and pet them, and seemed almost as interested in us as we were in them.

I felt a much greater connection to these seals than to any other type of aquatic life that I’ve seen before. Nor was I the only one. There was a young boy on our tour, who was at least 25 years younger than everyone else on board. He seemed bored, but when the seals arrived he petted them constantly and rested his head on theirs, sort of like an Eskimo kiss. This young boy might have just had his first inkling to become a marine biologist! The seals also enjoyed the attention, having evolved the intelligence and sensitivity of mammals rather than mindless instinct of mere fish.

We saw several other critters during the tour. As the boat motored through the harbor towards a small seal colony, we were flocked by small seagulls and giant pelicans who flew alongside the boat, looking for handouts. The pelicans would make great wide receivers in the NFL, able to fly alongside the boat at 20-30 knots and catch every fish thrown their way, as you can see in the video below.



Moving away from the shoreline, we passed dozens of container ships which had dropped anchor in the harbor. These ships were huge! Look at the picture that I’ve included here. You might need to click it to see the full-sized image. Do you see the small yellow thing on top of the containers on the left-hand side? That’s a full-sized school bus, though it looks no bigger than a toy! Walvis Bay is the main port, not only for Namibia but for much of southwestern Africa. When I was living here in 2007, I met a trucker who made a living on the Walvis Bay—Congo route, carrying frozen chickens to the Congo. Goods from Walvis travel on the two-lane paved roads to Botswana, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

We motored across the Walvis’ large natural harbor towards Pelican Point, a sandy spit of land which houses a small seal colony. On the way, Benguela dolphins swam in front of the boat, darting back and forth in front of the twin bows of the catamaran. The dolphins were playing and rolled onto their backs as they swam, giving us a good view of their bellies. We also briefly saw two humpbacked whales breach the water, though the pictures just didn’t come out.

When we arrived at Pelican Point, we saw several large groups of seals on the beach, each with hundreds of adults and pups. According to Captain Archie, seal mums know their pups by their cry, which means that the beach was a cacophony of wailing animals. Our captain told us that because seals breed so quickly, they often outstrip the environment’s ability to feed them all. As a result, he claimed that Namibia’s annual seal culls were justified. I don’t know about that, but I do know that the seals make a bloody racket.



By then it was time to turn back towards the dock. On the way, we passed several commercial oyster farms, which from the top of the water are just 55-gallon drums floating in formation. Tied to the drums, and floating underwater, small metal cages house the oysters which feed in the nutrient-rich waters. As we watched a small boat harvest some oysters, Jackson sneakily shucked a couple of dozen fresh oysters and put out some champagne – a great way to end a great harbor tour. Driving back to Swakopmund, we looked forward to the next tour when we would see the animals that were able to thrive in the sands of the Namib desert.

Dunes, Wildlife, and Himbas

My father’s 11-day visit at the end of August was an adventure of wildlife, dangerous roads, stark scenery, and traditional lifestyles. In just nine days we saw the southern desert, the coast, a great wildlife park, and some remote Himba villages.

The trip started rather ominously, as we went through four rental cars in the first three days. The first two cars never even made it out of the capital, Windhoek. One car flashed a warning light as I drove to the airport, and the second had an air-conditioner which blew only sand and hot air. After those problems, the rental car company upgraded us brand-new Renault Magane that was so fancy it didn’t even have a key to turn for the ignition—just a button to press and the engine purred to life. Unfortunately, the Magane did not have a very long life expectancy. On the third day of the trip, I hit a sandy patch on a gravel road and the car fishtailed. I was able to slow down, but not before we went over some rocks which took out one tire, the bumper, and radiator. Oops. The fourth car, thankfully, made it the rest of the trip.

Besides talking to Europcar a lot, during the first two days we traveled to the Namib, the world’s oldest desert. It varies from rocky fields to scrubland to towering dunes, and has an impressive collection of flora and fauna that have adapted to live in the environment. For example, the western edge of the desert is frequently blanketed in mist coming off the ocean. Some beetles stand up in the mist and absorb the water directly into their bodies. My father was particularly captivated by a place called Dead Vlei, an area where an ephemeral river formerly flowed and thus trees grew. After the river changed course, all the trees died but still remain standing. One night in the desert we stayed at a ritzy lodge that had an enormous buffet dinner and a watering hole just 50 metres from the outdoor dining area. While we ate our oryx steak, we watched live oryx at the water hole. Very strange!




After a quick but uninteresting visit to Swakopmund, a westernized city on the coast, we headed straight to Etosha National Park, the jewel of Namibia’s park system. Etosha is a huge park, slightly smaller than the state of Vermont. In the center of the park is a huge pan, which is a shallow depression that in years of good rain will have a thin covering of water. By the time we got there, all the water had dried up so the animals congregated around the many watering holes throughout the park. At one point we parked near the edge of the pan, where a watering hole lay 150 meters away. From there, we could see perhaps 250 different animals: zebra, springbok, oryx, and blue wildebeest (also known as gnus), not to mention multitudes of birds. At night, we stayed in a compound that had a nightlit watering hole, where we saw a huge herd of elephants playing in the water, and even the elusive black rhino.

At Etosha, I successfully introduced my father to camping. Dad had trouble at first because there had been a bad camping experience when he was a kid that he had suppressed for 45 years. After a sleepless night of reliving that experience and getting through it, he slept like a baby. It helped that I broke out the classic Namibian camping barbecue over a wood fire: boerwoers and brochen (a curly sausage and a fresh bun); potatoes, onions, and feta cheese roasted together in tinfoil; and a couple of bottles of cold Tafel lager.



Our last ‘tourist’ destination was the dusty city of Opuwo. The city’s name means, ‘Finished,’ because it is the place where the Himba tribes finally decided to stop trekking. The Himba are probably the most traditional tribe that remains viable in Namibia. They have been able to maintain their culture because their territory is of little economic interest to outsiders and because their leaders consciously chose to avoid a western lifestyle. To this day, they are very suspicious of western institutions like schools. On average, Himbas only send one in six children to school.



While we were in Opuwo, we hired a guide to take us out to a Himba village, and it was one of the most interesting parts of the trip. As you can see in the pictures, they look markedly different from other Namibians. They still dress mostly in animal hides, both sexes wear jewelry and hairstyles that denote different stages of life, and the women go topless while covering their bodies in a reddish paste that serves as a sunblock. When we visited the village, in the middle of the Namibian winter, there were only women and children there. All the men were out with the cattle, roaming the countryside for weeks at a time in search of grazing and water.

Through our interpreter, at first we greeted the wife of the headman. Then the women and children sat in a circle and asked us a bunch of questions. My favorite was when they asked my father where his wife was. He told them he had no wife because he was divorced. Immediately, they suggested some suitable partners for him! Afterwards we went into one woman’s hut, which was made from a wood frame covered with mud. Inside it was surprisingly large, perhaps 16 feet in diameter and tall enough for me to stand straight in the center. She showed us how they make the red paste with which they cover their bodies. After grinding an ochre rock on a large stone, they mix it with some stinky milkfat and just rub it on the skin. It looks pretty, but it sure doesn’t smell that way.

What’s interesting about the Himba is that they have consciously chosen their way of life. Prior to the colonial era, the Ovahimba and Ovaherero peoples were basically from the same tribe. When white missionaries moved into their area, the two groups split. The Ovaherero leader chose to align himself with missionaries, and the Ovaherero adopted modern clothing, schooling, and technology. In contrast, the Ovahimba chief eschewed close contact with the missionaries and other colonizers. The Ovahimba today still practice traditional ancestor worship and have very little contact with modern technology, although the government has tried to bring them into the 20th century. They remind me of the Mennonites or the Amish in America, people who have consciously chosen not to adopt a modern lifestyle.



The final three days, my father visited my home on the mission and attended my classes. He was impressed, as I frequently am, at the intelligence and warm reception from the kids. He spent one period with each of my classes, answering their questions about America, his job, etc. At one point, kids from a class that I don’t teach wanted to talk to him, and he held court underneath a tree to a group of 40 or 50 learners. I came in at the end of it when he was comparing the German genocide of the Herero in 1903 to the Holocaust forty years later—well, at least they were learning something!

I think my father did pretty well for his first ever trip abroad, dealing with strange accents, money, and camping. He was very willing to try new things, like the pieces of cow stomach that teachers here often eat for lunch. Although it took me months to try one, Dad dug right in and seemed to like it. Me, there's one one of the four stomachs which I find palatable.

It was also nice to see my mission through the eyes of someone who knows me from back home. Dad could appreciate all the things I love about this place: the quiet sandy roads that I run on and from which I see all manner of beautiful sunsets and sunrises; the genuinely appreciative, eager, and intelligent learners; the challenge and satisfaction of trying to speak Oshiwambo. Hopefully you get to experience a little of that too in the chair your are sitting in right now.