Posts for April, 2026

As mentioned in yesterdays post, Capetown was a changeover point from one cruise to the next. It was also a point at which there was a chnage over for a lot of the staff. We noticed this last night at dinner with a lot of new faces amongst the restaurant staff. So today the Captain (who has not changed) held a cocktail party to introduce the new members of his senior staff.

This morning we pulled into the port of Luderitz, a small town or village, in southern Namibia and at the southern end of the Namibian Desert which is called The Namib. The country of Namibia is famous for this coastal desert, which is the oldest desert in the world, and which runs the full length of the Namibian coast, starting in South Africa and running north into Angola. As you can see from the photos below the desert is a mix of sand and stone and is very dry getting on average about 15mm of rain per year.

This morning we pulled into the harbor of a town called Walvis Bay which is the main sea port for Namibia. It has a long history of contact with Europeans dating back to 1485 when nearby Cape Cross was visited by Diogo Cao and 1487 when Bartolomeu Dias anchored in Walvis Bay itself. Interestingly while Walvis Bay is one of the few places on the Namibian coast that provides good anchorage for ships it has no natural water supply even today. That handicap explains the near by town of Swakopmund which sits at the mouth of the similarly named Swakopmund River and hence has a water supply but does not have any form of protected acnhorage for ships. So the two towns are somewhat symbiotic. Swakopmund provides the water and Walvis Bay provides a lifeline to the rest of the world. Incidentally the names reflect their earlier colonial history with Walvis Bay being English and Swakopmund being German. Tourism is the main business of both towns.s

We noticed a large display of Easter chocolates in one of the main lounges today.

Dinner in the Red Ginger Restaurant.

I have not mentioned before that the ship is taking precautions to reduce the risk of piracy. As night approaches all cabin curtains are closed, and various external lights are turned off to make the ship less visible. This seems to be a function of being off the West Coast of Africa. I might say it was a bit of a surprise when we got a nice printed note to tell us this was going to happen.

Today we had a tour of São Tomé which is the capital and largest city of the island and Central African country of São Tomé and Principe. Here is a link to a wikipedia page about the country click here. Like many West African countries the first European occupants of the island were Portuguese in about 1470 and eventually replaced by Dutch and then English. The Portuguese brought slaves to the islands from nearby African mainland countries and that is the source of todays population. As you can see throughout the photos below fishing is an important sourcce of food, while cocoa and chocolate are a major export. Portuguese is the primary language and most of the population are nominally Catholic although various belief systems such as voodoo were brought to the islands by the slaves. We were "entertained" by two voodoo-style dances today, though it was hard to tell the extent to which these were anything more than tourist entertainment.

A. day at sea.

Today we docked at the port of Cotonou in the country of Benin. There is a lot that could be said about Benin as it played a noteable role in the Transatlantic slave trade, both as a source of slaves with local rulers selling slaves to Europeans, as a location of one of West Africas Gate of No Return and as a departurre point for slave ships from the Benin coast near the town of Whydah. In addition Benin is a country where the practice of Voodoo is very active. But rather than give you a lecture on these topics I will provide some wikipedia links on these subjects for those that are interested; Cotonou Benin Voodoo Whydah

Our excursion today was a long bus ride east (from the port in Sekondi-Takorada) along the coast to the towns/cities of Cape Coast and Elmina where we visited in turn Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle. These two structures were built by European colonial powers as part of their search for riches on the African coast and eventually became essential facilities supporting the Atalntic slave trade. At both of these places we were able to see were slaves were kept before being shipped to the New World and at Cape Coast Castle we saw one of the original Gate of No Return.

Another day another country, this time The Ivory Coast, or officially The Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, and another bus ride. We docked this morning in the city of Abidjan, to find a large port with many cargo ships and a sizeable container handling facility. We also found 9 green tour buses waiting for us, a bunch of semi-trailers waiting for a bulk carrier ship to unload and their drivers variously sleeping or resting on the ground near their trucks. Quite a spectacular sight.

A day at sea.