Day 97 The Stiltz Lodge, Swakopmund

Drive to Swakopmund only took a couple of hours and was on black top for most of the way.  Swakopmund is an unusual seaside tourist destination because the locals actually flock there to get away from the searing heat of the interior.  When we arrived it was actually sunny but often it is covered in a cloak of fog (last time we were here it was foggy and cold).  Had a lovely lunch in the garden café before getting a permit for the Welwitshia Drive and heading back out into the desert.

The Welwitshia Drive is a 160 km round trip. The road takes you through the semi-arid desert of the Namib which is extremely desolate but has its own beauty.  The land has also proven very lucrative for uranium miners and there are several very large mines and quite a few areas of exploration.
One of the key sights on the drive is the moon landscape of the Swakop river.  

 And the other is theWelwitshia Plants which are unique to the Namib desert and can live for hundreds of years.  The main one of the drive is actually reported to be 1500 years old!

Went to dinner at the Tug restaurant and watched the sunset over the Atlantic – we have now driven from the Indian to Atlantic Oceans!