Wed, 3/12/25  Namibia

Day 66 - Wednesday, March 12th, 2025 – Walvis Bay, Namibia

I'm struggling to figure out how to describe this day. I started working with a guy named Herman back in November of last year. He said that he could get a lift equipped van. So I counted that as being done. When I contacted him again in January he said that he was having a hard time finding a lift equipped van. He said he would keep trying. February came and went. He still did not have a van. He kept saying that he would lift me into his car. Mary and I did not like that for safety reasons. Finally, Tuesday, Mary and I agree that we would try having him lift me into his car. I was not thrilled with the idea, but I did not want to miss the opportunity. In his pictures he looks like a big guy. He suggests that I go and book the excursion online. They tried it on my phone, and it got an error. I tried it on my laptop with a different card and I got an error. I tried my iPad with a third card. I got an error. Herman said “Don't worry about it. We'll figure it out.” The guy was so easy-going you had to give him a chance.

There was another drama going on. There's a Facebook page for the world cruise 2025. One of the posts said that the only way to get from the ship to the shore was to take the shuttle. Unfortunately, none of the shuttles would be lift equipped. On the surface this meant that I could not get to shore to hook up with Herman. This made me unhappy, so we went to the front desk and tried to get some information. Unfortunately, there was none. I went to bed with an excursion that wasn't paid for and no way to get to Herman. This does not make for an easy sleeping night.

Nonetheless, we got up. We had to go through the Namibian immigration process. Because we knew this was going to take a while Mary and I went to breakfast. We had time because there was a line outside the restaurant that was a mile long. A mile is not much of an exaggeration. As we had breakfast the line seemed to disappear. We finished and then went out and got in what was left of the wine. We still had to wait about 30 minutes or so to get through the immigration process. When we finally got there, they stamped our passports, and we were on our way to the gangway. If you've ever been on a gangway, you know they come in all sizes and shapes. Of all of them that we've been on, this one had to be the worst. It was like going down is where each step was 3 inches. It made for a very bumpy ride. I didn't really care because I was not doing the work, but you would think that they would have a better ramp.

When we finally got to the ground, we noticed that there was no restrictions for getting out. We could walk across the bridge to where the tour guides were. The whole Facebook thing was a joke. That'll teach me to follow Facebook information. You'd think I was smart enough for that before, but I'm never too old to learn or relearn new things.

Just on the other side of the bridge we saw Herman. Thankfully he was a big guy – not necessarily tall but very bulky. That made my initial impression positive. He was very friendly. We walked about 300 yards to his SUV. You can see in one of the pictures what the car looked like. Too bad they did not get a picture of me in it. The thinking was he would just lift me into the car. Sounds easy? Not necessarily. We decided the front seat would not work well. So, we tried the back seat. This had a little wider opening. Mary put the spare roho cushion down on this. I could not sit on the back seat of the car without the roho cushion. My ass would be singing without it. Herman literally dead lifts me off my chair up about two feet and puts me on top of the roho cushion. It wasn't as smooth as glass, but it was closed. You could tell he was working though. It took him a few minutes to catch his breath. We made it. So far everything I was worried about has come to pass without issue.

We decided on a four hour trip: Pelican Point visit and Namibia's western coastline scenery - Shore Excursion. Herman laid out the plan. Our first stop was to the Flamingo lagoon. It was only about 5 minutes from the ship. He said we were a little late. Earlier there would have been hundreds of flamingos, but we did see 200 or more. They were in the distance, but Mary got some decent pictures. The tide was out and they were apparently eating whatever the tide left behind. Mary claims they got more pink as they ate. I'm not sure I agree, but everybody's got their opinion. We took several pictures before heading out. Before we pulled away, Herman let air out of all four tires. He said we were heading to the desert and we needed to let air out of the tires to get better traction in the sand. He said we do not want to get stuck out there.

We drive maybe 10 miles on roads that are kind of paved but have a lot of sand. We're basically driving through Namib Desert along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. You know when you go to the beach, the ocean has waves that crash on the beach. This was so serene. The water just kind of edged up against the sand. Not far from the sand were huge ships in what he called the middle channel, I believe. We drove a while and all of a sudden on the left side of the car, opposite the ocean, we see channels of pink water. All the water is filled with salt and that salt makes the water pink. Down the road we go past the salt factory for lack of a better term. There are piles of salt that are 20 or 30 feet in the air.

From there we keep driving on sand for probably 20 miles or more, to the point where you saw nothing but sand in every direction. It was all very flat. It was not hilly like you might see in a movie or something. It was literally sand everywhere. In some places there were no tracks so we were kind of on our own. I'm sure Herman had done this 1000 times before so I wasn't worried about that. It was cool driving through the sand. In some spots it was like driving on ice. All of a sudden he slows up and we pull up too probably 200 to 300 seals on the shoreline. He pulls right up within 20 feet of them. Mary gets out of the car and takes videos and pictures. She was literally 3 feet from several of them. I will post the videos. I think the thing that got me the most was the amount of noise they make. I guess I never thought a seal would be noisy, but why would I think that anyway. I think of a lot of stuff, but that's a little outside my realm. There was one little guy who was asleep and missed the action. All of his buddies ran into the sea as Mary got closer. This little guy woke up saw Mary and scooted to the water faster than lightning. This was a cool stop.

We even traveled further down the sands to the Pelican Point Lighthouse. Apparently, the lighthouse is on the Atlantic Ocean. I did not get the significance of it other than it was probably 25 to 30 miles from anything. If anything, it was a good picture taking spot. From there we drove all the way back. I think Herman was a little concerned about time because he actually got on what would be the Namibian Expressway. I was surprised they had such sophisticated infrastructure. Earlier he said that goods come into Walvis Bay and trucks take it to places like Botswana and Angola. I took this step further and thought that they needed the sophisticated roads to handle all of this traffic. Anyway, we drove back into town pretty quickly. Our last stop was actually on the other side of town.

We stopped at a series of dunes. The highest is called Dune 7. These are natural dunes that were huge. As you can see in the pictures Dune 7 probably goes 300 feet in the air or higher. There were people that walk up and down the dune for exercise. We didn't see anybody actually do it, but Herman says people do it all the time. We were there for about 15 minutes or so. We got some decent pictures.

To this point we still had not done any souvenir shopping so that was the last stop. We drove to a little market area only about half a mile from the ship. Mary got out and bought the T-shirts, refrigerator magnet and postcards. Hermit found a post office box, so Mary quickly filled out the cards, added the stamps and sent them on their way.

From there we made our way back to the ship. Herman used his negotiating skills to get us right up next to the ship. We didn't have to walk the half a mile or so from shore to the ship. At this point you got to love the guy. Now, he's going to lift me out of the car and into my chair. You would think going down was easy, but it was a challenge, nonetheless. Again, he deadlifted me and put me in my chair. We tried the payment system one more time and it worked. I don’t know why it did not work earlier, but I didn't care. Ihe real reason I wanted to do it on my own was because I had $132.00 credit from a previous tour. I could apply that to Herman’s excursion. Gotta save where nickels where we can. So we gave Herman a nice tip on top of that. Hopefully he and his family - wife and three daughters - we'll be happy. We took pictures, and he made his way off the dock.

Then we had to go up the freaky ramp. Even the people at the ramp were a little concerned about how they were going to get me up. At the end of the day, they decided to do a deadlift. There were four guys that took four corners of the chair and literally walked me up the ramp. My wheels never touched the ground. Once inside, we had to go through immigration again. Thankfully, this only took about 3 or 4 minutes. We were back in the room about 4:00 or so.

To say we made something out of nothing is a huge understatement. As I mentioned earlier in this entry, I didn't think we were going anywhere. I was convinced that we were going to be on the ship all day. Boy, was I wrong. I thought it was an amazing excursion. We got to see all kinds of desert related things. I will never forget the seals. The pink water was cool through. There were parts where the blue of the ocean and the pink mixed to make some pretty pictures. I thought cruising through the desert was pretty cool. We were literally in the middle of a huge sandbox. This was a success beyond words. None of it would have been possible without Herman.

Once in the room we chilled. I don't think either of us took a nap, but we definitely rested for a while. We got cleaned up a little bit and I talked to my parents on FaceTime. From there we went to dinner.

I've been drinking that Camus Chardonnay. I guess I am tired of the reds that are on their menu. For my appetizer I had corn and crab chowder. It was good. The pasta option was spaghetti with one meatball. Sounded pretty good to me. When I got it and ate it I was right. It was very good. For my entree I decided to try something I have not tried before on the ship. I decided on pot roast. It was a surprise that it was as good as it was. Mary had chicken Kiev and salad of course. She liked her chicken. For dessert we both had cherry sorbet. We're really hooked on the sorbets.

We left then headed towards the cabin. I was pretty beat up. I think Mary was too, but she just wouldn't admit it. There was a female singer on the stage, but we had missed the 7:30 show. As we walked back, we ran into Brenda and Rod. We sat and talked to them for 20 minutes or so. Mary decided she wanted to go to the show, so she put me in the room, and she went down to the show. I don't do well with female singers. With my hearing aids, sometimes I have to say “get that poor lady's hand out of the car door”, if you get what I mean. So, for the next hour and a half Mary went to the show and I played cards online. I did not do very well. When Mary came back, she said the show was very good. She captured some videos of it. I will attempt to upload them. From there we went to bed.

It had been a long but very successful day. The one thing I've learned is that even though it looked bleak in the beginning we need to keep plowing forward and hoping for good things. Today it worked out for us. In a big way.