Getting Diggy With It

Walvis Bay, Namibia
November 23, 2013

The buffet breakfast was quite a spread, it even included oysters, but neither of us seem to have much of an appetite this morning. We were ready to be picked up for our marine tour at 8:00. Our driver, Marionetta, would also be our guide for the day.

We had a quick stop at the office in Swakopmund, and then headed to Walvis Bay. At the marina, we gathered with 20 other people and boarded our catamaran, Miandri and set sail.

We immediately had a visitor on our boat, Diggy, a young cape fur seal who weighed around 90 kilos. Marionetta had rescued him when he was a pup because he was abandoned by his young mother and was being bullied by the bulls in his colony. She bottle fed him and nursed him back to health. Every morning he joins the tour boat at the marina, and then he heads out to spend the rest of the day with his colony.

Diggy was extremely friendly and gentle. Bill and I each had the opportunity to get up close and personal!

Our next visitors were pelicans, Pinky and JJ. Pinky is a mature/married pelican. Mature pelicans have a bump on their foreheads and the colours around their eyes are orange for females and yellow for males. JJ does not have a bump on his forehead and the colour around his eyes was red or pink, since he is a young pelican. Marionetta tossed fish to them and the seagulls as we headed further out of the port.

We saw several oyster farms in the harbor. The oysters are placed into baskets when they are the size of a thumbnail and grow to full size after 8 or 10 months. This growth period quite accelerated here due to the conditions, the water temperature is always between 11 and 15 degrees. Since they remain at a constant, cool temperature, they only grow and do not reproduce. The oysters here are very meaty and firm and as I was able to find out at lunch, quite delicious with some lemon, pepper and a dash of Tabasco sauce.

The nearby abandoned ship is used to maintain the oysters. Every 8 weeks, they are removed from their baskets and scrubbed clean so that they continue to open and feed. Then 100 are sorted placed back into each basket and lowered back into the ocean until they are ready for harvest.

The lighthouse was built around 1915. It is quite unique because it painted with black and white rings. It was not painted red and white because these colours would not show up against the backdrop of the red dunes. Another distinctive characteristic of this lighthouse is that it is not built at the end of the peninsula. This is because the length of the point is constantly growing and shrinking when the winds are blowing the dunes into the ocean during certain times during the year.

We sailed past several colonies of cape fur seals; Diggy belongs to one of them. We were able to see some of the flamingos up close. The larger, less colourful ones are Greater Flamingos and the smaller, more brightly coloured ones are the Lesser Flamingos. Ollie, another friendly, but much larger, bull cape fur seal boarded our boat. He had a big scar on his shoulder. Apparently he is a bit too friendly and got caught up in the nets of a fishing boat.

As the crew was preparing our lunch we sailed near a few dolphins. They were not in a playful mood, so we did not see much of them. We usually just saw their dorsal fins. Our lunch was fresh oysters and some other finger foods. We washed it all down with champagne.

We finished the cruise and returned to the hotel after 1:00. Bill and I were both sleepy, so we had a nice long afternoon nap. We decided to get a bite to eat around 4:00, but Bill started to feel ill. We went for a walk anyway and I had a quick bite to eat at Stadtmitte Café. My chicken, feta, tomato and avocado salad was pretty good. Bill was trying his best to keep his Powerade down. We went back to the hotel to let Bill recover. It seems like he is going through what I had at Sossusvlei.