Day 104: Walvis Bay, Namibia

In the weeks before our arrival, we got word the Namibia was raising the price of their visa to 90 Euros effective April 1. Their visa website didn’t work, and it seemed like a lot for an 8 hour visit. A lot of folks on the trip were refusing to pay. Well, they backed down and dropped the charge to 18€. We told the ship that we would go ashore and purchase the visa. I think that the folks that jumped in and secured their visas early probably never received a refund. So the day of departure, we had booked an excursion, which was supposed to simplify the immigration process, and maybe it did, but we waited around an awfully long time to get our visas. When we finally departed the ship, we’d decided to use the time before our afternoon excursion to go to the mall to look for shoes for our upcoming tango performance. We found a guide who said that he would shuttle us for a reasonable price. The mall was about 5K away and was pretty nice. The good news is that Jess found shoes, and the bad was that our guy blew us off for the return! We didn’t see any other taxis, and my global SIM wasn’t working in Namibia, so we felt pretty stranded and thought we’d miss our excursion. We found someone to call us a taxi and barely made us back in time. We were supposed to meet on the ship, but didn’t have enough time for that, so we found our bus and boarded early. The excursion was kind of a bust, but here are some pictures:

I mainly booked the excursion to see the Flamingos the live in the bay. Apparently someone from the morning tour ran at them and scared them off so they flew away from the bay. They were far off and backlit, so I had to ask what color they were. I was told pink and white, which couldn’t be seen from the distance.

After Walvis Bay, we have 7 sea days, which will culminate with a show put together with all of the dance classes, and there were a lot! You could attend 3-4 dance classes per sea day if you like, and some folks did! We focused on the tango academy, which was extremely difficult for us. We persevered though and are competent enough to do a choreographed routine. It’s tomorrow night and we’re looking forward to it!

I picked up a severe bacterial infection in my legs and am being treated by the onboard medical staff. I suspect it was the pollution in Thailand, but don’t know for sure. Jess has a severe stomach bug as well. Africa is tough!