Windhoek

Starting our journey south, back towards South Africa, we split the journey in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia.

We went out for dinner to Joe’s Beerhouse, walking from our hostel. It’s definitely not a pedestrian friendly city with many roads lacking pavements and short pedestrian crossings.

We had a interesting meal, sampling some of the meats we’d just seen in Etosha; oryx, zebra, kudu and springbok. They were all pretty tasty! 

We’d been told by a couple of people that there wasn’t much to see in Windhoek. And we agree. The next day we headed for a couple of museums.

First, the Independence Museum, which showcases the Namibian war of independence. It was a very strange place, built in a North Korean style by a North Korean firm. The exhibits were mainly captioned photographs, with nothing in the way of descriptions or narrative, and large, graphic murals. Then even the captions ran out. It had the air of propaganda about it.

From here we headed to what we thought was the National Museum only to be told that this was the administrative building of the museum, that the actual museum was closed to renovations, but there was a small section still open – the Owela museum. It featured a number of exhibits about the native people and their customs, and also about the animals native to Nambia. This too was a rather uninspiring museum, better than the last but a number of the displays had no lighting. The Swakopmund museum was a much better museum.