Saturday 22 August-A day off - the harbour trip

The evening before (Friday) we had a visit from Keith Tayler and his partner Nicole who are on a six month travel to Africa and South America http://keithnicole.blogspot.com/. Keith is the present incumbent of my former job back in the Office of the Supervising Scientist in Australia. The picture is Sharon, Keith & Nicole in the car park at our hotel after a great evening out in Swakopmund. The car is their red Avis VW Citi which seems to be getting them around Namibia pretty well!

Thus it was that, after a very successful training course, we found ourselves with a day off. This was because there are no flights from Walvis Bay to Johannesburg on a Saturday. With a day off my colleague Sharon and I set off for Walvis Bay to have a double header tour, the Bay and then the dunes.

The morning was foggy and the drive down the coast from Swakopmund to Walvis Bay was quite surreal in the mist. The campsite behind the hotel looked very grey.

The departure from the jetty was past the floating dry dock, busy with ships under repair ...............................

and into a flat calm mist shrouded sea....................past a hulk lined with cormorants..............

...........................and the first seal was aboard for a free ride. All the seals in Walvis Bay are Cape Fur Seals.

Out on the bay we saw plenty of seals and then the first dolphins appeared; these were bottle-nosed dolphins who played in the wake and under the bows of our launch. They were all over the place and plenty of other boats joined in the fun of watching them .

Then we went further out past the bell buoy...

................and then we saw the rare and smaller, Benguela Dolphins, unique and endemic to this area. Again they spent their time in the bow waves of the launches.

Then we caught sight of a whale just cruising along rising to the surface every few hundred metres - I think it was a southern right whale.
Then we crossed the bay to see the seal colonies and on the way watched a stormy petrel take off. The mist grounded the pelicans we had expected to see as they apparently only fly in good weather.

The seals were everywhere on the beach at the far side of the bay, but it was still quit misty

We could see the seals of various sizes going in and out of the water and chasing away seagulls, which was very amusing.

After watching the seals do a spot of fishing for their lunch we sailed off to a quiet part of the bay near the oyster farms. These rafts support ropes from which baskets of Chilean oysters are hung. The oysters mature in the cold, food-rich waters of the Benguela current very quickly, reaching market size in 8 moths, about half the usual time.

No prizes then for guessing what as on the menu for lunch-oysers and champagne! Sharon did her best to support local industries

After lunch we headed back, still in the mist, to Walvis Bay to swop the boat for a Land Rover .It remained only to thank the organisers of the tour Levo Tours (levo@iway.na)
for an excellent fun morning despite the rather persistent misty weather. Now we were back on dry land again and it was time to head out for the dunes and the National Park and Sandwich Bay- but that is another story.................................

Wednesday 19th August-Mine visits

We had a day out from the seminar room today to visit the two uranium mines actively working in Namibia at the moment. We began with some presentatiions by staff of the Rossing mine and then took a bus out to the site near the town of Arandis. As you can see it is long desert drive through a very parched countryside

The mine has been operating for 30 years or so and as a result it is a big pit now...................

It is about 3000 m long, 1750 m wide and 600 m deep and they are not finished yet
by a long way!

The site is extensive and we were taken to a number of locations for technical presentations and discussions. It was a great visit.

Then we returned to town to get another bus to another mine. On the drive across another stretch of sandy plain, with a bit of dry grass this time, we saw a few wild animals..........but mostly too far away for good pictures but ostrich, sprongbok, and oryx were all seen.

All in all it was a grand day out and very instructive for our participants as well as interesting for the lecturers as well.

August 15th - On the road again

Saturday evening in Vienna Airport, and this time it is off to Frankfurt, Johannesburg and Walvis Bay in Namibia followed by the drive to Swakopmund. I was here 2 years ago for a technical meeting but this time it is a training course that I am helping to run as well as visits to the country's two operating uranium mines.

The flights were with Austrian (A319) and Lufhansa (B747-400) and South African Express (B737-200) all OK and pretty well on time. I Johannesburg I met up with my former colleague Sharon Paulka from Adelaide who will be working with me on the training course.

Our hotel, the venue for the course, is a smart new (still building) Hotel and Spa right on the Atlantic ocean beach about 4 miles north of Swakopmund city. This is the view from the conference room balcony and note the lack of roof on the north wing!

The surf crashes relentlessly onto the beach 24 hours of the day and the weather is surprisingly cool, to say nothing of the salt spray that covers everything continually. The view from my room to the south with the Atlantic rolling in and the grass for de-sanding your feet.
The sea is very cold due to the Benguela Current which runs up from the south, swimming is not recommended!

Sadly a strike by Kenya Airways has left a number of participants stranded all over the place but gradually most of them made it through to Namibia.

Wednesday we will be visiting the two operating uranium mines.