Wednesday, May 17: We spent the night at a bed and breakfast in Walvis Bay. There are notably fewer fences, locked gates, and walls topped with razor wire surrounding homes and businesses than we have seen in the other towns and cities of the RSA and Namibia.

After a morning exploring the downtown area we drove 33k to Swakopmund, another seaside city. Swakopmund is more tourist-oriented, with many hotels and guesthouses, and a large number of businesses catering to safarigoers, sightseers, fishing enthusiasts, surfers, etc. We enjoyed 90 minutes in a large municipal aquarium displaying several types of sharks, sea turtles, and the varieties of fish caught commercially off the west coast of Namibia and other seacoast countries in Southern Africa.

We decided to push on driving east through Namibia to spend the night at the town of Otjiwarongo. On the outskirts of the southern entrance to town we found the Out of Africa Lodge, which was barely visible from the highway. It's a very upscale hotel with an excellent restaurant, which was lively because the hotel was hosting three different large meetings and business conferences at the time of our arrival.