Day 144 – Swakopmund, a little slice of Germany
After a hellish night of little to no sleep, we stayed in the shady part of our room. Stupidly, we failed to realise that we stayed there past the time when they turn off the generator (9am). This seems crazy as we are the only guests in the hotel, so they should have organised the running of the generator around our schedule. We had to take drip showers and J ran out of hot water. The toilet wouldn’t flush, which was also fun. S poured water all over a hand towel and wrapped himself in it to try to cool off. This proved fairly unsuccessful. The room was an oven. We packed as quickly as possible and called A&K to ensure that we were going to be moved to Swakopmund one day early.
We headed down to sit in the slightly cooler main room. S refused to button his shirt as the weather was so hot. The staff were extremely friendly as usual and continued to give us cold drinks. As we had missed breakfast, they insisted we have a snack plate. This despite the fact that they clearly understood we were leaving the hotel a day early because of the unbearable situation with the room. The manager came by and was very apologetic. He told us to eat and drink as long as we wanted and they would then take us to our hotel in Swakopmund, which was about an hour away. He also then said he was coming with us as he needed a break from the lodge.
Despite the fact that the staff knew we were leaving, they gave us 5 star service. The ‘snack platter’ ended up being a gourmet food platter of crab claws, fish fingers, chicken, beef and crayfish. Chef also made a Greek salad. S refused to eat anything other than the crab claws, so J had her work cut out for her.
The owners at this lodge truly have their priorities screwed up. It’s no use to have a 5 star restaurant with great service and such poor accommodations.
The drive to Swakopmund was pretty straightforward. We said good bye to the manager and our guide Eric and we all apologised to one another. S thinks Eric and the manager were discussing our departure in Afrikaans on the way to Swakopmund. He heard the words “5 star”, “3 star” and “solar power”. Indeed one would expect that a true eco friendly lodge and a place that gets sunlight nearly 365 days a year would have solar power.
Our new hotel, the Strand in Swakopmund, is a 5-star Western style hotel set directly on the beach. It is not in keeping with the safari lodges that we intended to stay in through most of our trip, but we had intended to spend one night at the Strand in Swakopmund given the town’s German heritage. The rooms are what you would expect. They are air conditioned, clean and relatively spacious. The bathroom is separated from the bedroom and sitting area and has doors. The downstairs pub serves good beer.
Dinner tonight was at the famous Brauhaus. The Brauhaus is a German-owned German restaurant a short walk from our hotel. On the way there, we walked into a confusion of guineafowl. J was super excited to get this close to so many guineafowl. At Brauhaus, we both had the bratwurst and German beer. This time the bratwurst was excellent and perfectly authentic, as were the sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. All of the staff spoke German and English. S tried to converse with them in German until he ran out of words. The clientele was also mostly Germans. One of the waiters explained that this is a popular retirement town for Germans, and this is one of their favourite restaurants.
Until the 1920s, Namibia was known as German Southwest Africa and had been colonised by Germany. This explains in part why Swakopmund is so German, with German street names, German shops and German architecture.
We will take good, basic German sausages and air conditioning over sweating during a gourmet meal anytime.
Just as we were finishing our food, a group of young street performers came by to give a mini concert. They sang some traditional songs and The Lion Sleeps Tonight by the Tokens. It was a nice end to the evening. We somehow found our way back to the hotel using the hotel map, despite trying to get lost on a number of occasions.
