Walvis Bay, Namibia - Feb 6th

Walvis Bay is a pleasant town of 80,000 on the northern coast of the Namibian Desert. It receives a grand total of 50 millimeters of precipitation a year, all in the form of a daily morning fog. The last heavy rain was 30 years ago. Town water comes from a desalinization plant to the north.

Walvis Bay Lagoon, just a few kilometers outside of town, features migratory birds, including these pink flamingoes:

The dunes in the area are huge, as high as 250 meters, dwarfing anything we saw in Brazil. The wind blows all the time so people parasail. It’s hard to convey the scale in a picture; but below you can see the size compared to a parasailer; a telephone pole, and some climbers:

The dunes slope at almost exactly 35 degrees; any steeper and the sand falls over itself.

Many roads are not macadam, are made sinply by using a road grader and then repeadedly flooding the roadbed with saltwater from tank trucks. The water evaporates and the compacted salt pan is as hard as any asphalt road.

Here are Joani and I at the bottom of a dune:

The ocean is cold off Namibia at 64° F but the average daily temp is a sunny 87 causing the daily morning fog. Plants like the black lichen have learned to capture fog moisture. On the left the lichen is closed up. On the right our guide poured a little water on it and the lichen has opened up to drink and to expose its chlorophyll for some quick photosynthesis. It does this every morning. 

Black lichen is protected and people cannot drive or walk on it as the compression would kill it.

We also toured the "Moonscape" areas of the Namibian desert a little bit further inland. This is where the latest "Mad Max" movie was filmed:

Enough science (the bridge instructor told a reallly good engineer joke for next time). On to southern Namibia!