Windhoek

Arrived at my last lodge early in the afternoon. It's located quite close to the airport, but unfortunately still too far to watch the airplanes. The road leading to the lodge from the main road was quite interesting; I'm glad I didn't come here on my first day. When I arrived it was all very quiet, I was shown my room (this time without heating, but with warm water bottle), and found out I would be the only guest again for the first night. As the holiday was slowly coming to an end, I decided to go on one last sundowner drive through the farm. But as it was very windy, we didn't get to see many animals (still more than we would in Germany). I then got my dinner and back to the room to get my hot water bottle ready. Just then all light went off in my room, the fuse had blown. As I didn't know where the fuse box was I tried to find someone, (I had already said good night to everyone, so I didn't know where to look). It wasn't a problem, the girl from the reception was still around on the grounds, as were two security people, who fixed my fuse right away. Next morning it was all foggy; happening about once a year in this area. (I guess since I hardly had any fog in Swakopmund, I needed some here.) But the sun slowly started breaking through after breakfasts, and I made my way into Windhoek. Even though it's the capital and biggest city in Namibia, it still feels more like a little town. Ok, I didn't go into all the suburbs, especially tried to avoid the townships (called the same, but not anywhere near SD bad as in Johannesburg). I basically only went into the city center, which I could easily walk through. Looked at some of the old, typically german buildings, like the famous Christuskirche. But a lot of them are in between newer, 80s style, not especially nice buildings. There is a weird mixture of shops, of course souvenir shops with anything you can imagine and might have to do with africa, a crafts gallery where you can actually watch a few people create the crafts (so you know it's not just cheap China import), extremely expensive jewelry shops, especially diamonds, a street market where people from all over the country try to sell their crafts, ... Also the other shops, from the cheapest bargain shops and people trying to sell stuff on the streets, to high end cloth shops (didn't see any of the big names, but still definatly too expensive for me). What I had already seen in Swakopmund also existed here from time to time: some shops had a closed gate, which would be opened by one of the security people (they existed in every shop anyway), so that nobody could just quickly get in or out. After I had spend enough money I went back to my car, paid for parking and for the guy looking after my car, and returned back to the lodge. Shortly before I reached it, a tree wad blocking the street. As there was even more wind than the day before, a bug branch of a dead tree had collapsed. But as the area next to the steer wasn't much different to the street, I just drove around. (Of course I told them in the lodge, so that new guests wouldn't have a problem finding the way).