Back to Namibia and South Africa
 

Left Houston on Wednesday and flew in the big Lufthansa A-380-800 double decker, took a celebratory picture of my pre-flight glass of champagne. Business class was ok, the food is a joke but the lie flat seats are not too bad and I actually got some sleep. We had a 13 hour layover in Frankfurt, the Lufthansa Senator's lounge helped the time pass. We ate dinner in the airport again, a nice steak place and then took the 11PM all night flight to Johannesburg, we skip the plane food as we have eaten and it'sfter 11pm. Had a 3 hour layover and then our flight to Namibia on a small tight cramped SAA Express jet. That finished about 30 hours of travel.

I woke up somewhere over central Africa at sunrise, I think it was over the Congo. Saw a beautiful thunderstorm with the big anvil shaped clouds and lightening below. The jet was slowly maneuvering around it and I watched it and saw beautiful flashes of lightening from within. All I had was my cellphone handy, other cameras were in the overhead compartment. Everyone else had their shades down so I guess the folks in the flight deck and I were the only ones who saw it.

After getting our bags at the Walvis Bay airport we went to Hertz to get our car. The girl had trouble with running my American Express card so told us to go on and leave, she got the address and phone for where we are staying, she didn't seem too concerned that we were leaving with a fairly new Toyota Rav 4 without securing the payment.

Drove down the coastal highway to Swakopmund. We got checked into our apartment and just in time to snap a shot of the sunset. The Atlantic is very cold here, lots of cold sea breezes so it reminds me of London in the winter or maybe Seattle. Love the sound of the waves crashing on the beach day and night, we are a few hundred feet from the shore with a small public parking lot between.

These were all cellphone shots, I use the Snapseed App to edit and enhance.

Very cool anvil. I guess you handled the hurricane ok?

Oh, fine. We were in Alaska seeing kids and our home was not in the flooded area although the whole back of our community along Lake Houston and the upper Trinity river flooded pretty badly.

Kind of glad to be away now for 5 weeks as things were a bit crazy what with refuse trucks, contractors and all the cleanup going on.

Great thunderstorm. Glad you came through the hurricane OK, I was wondering about you.

Here are a few things from the apartment we rented. For Cellar Dwellers outside the USA this may look normal but for those back home it shows some of the things that we take for granted that are different.

We rented a nice 2 bed/2 bath apartment for 30 days, it's so much nicer for a long stay than a hotel and cheaper. We are paying $46,000 Namibian which works out to around $3700 US and $123 per day which is cheaper than any of the nice hotels. It has a full kitchen, clothes washer and dryer as well as good wifi, TV (haven't watched it yet) and a garage for the car.

1. But the artwork is odd, this piece is above our bed.

2. The plugs here are like the ones for South Africa. I rigged up some adapters a few years ago for USA to UK so all I needed was a few UK to South Africa/Namibia adapters.

3. The washer and dryer are in the kitchen and are pretty small. No instructions so I had to Google for some.

4. Toilets accomplish the same purpose but where is the tank? In the wall? Press the small button for #1 and the larger one for #2!

1.The refrigerator is smaller than anything you see in a typical America kitchen. It's not really a big deal, you just shop a bit more often. And sizes of products are also smaller, like the largest milk is about 1 liter.

2. They have instruction books on everything but for the oven and stove they are in German. The stove was pretty easy to figure out and I finally figured the oven out but had to look up a conversion chart. 350 F which is pretty common setting for baking is 176 C.

3. The oddest thing is the microwave which also has a built in toaster!