After São Tomé, we spent several days at sea continuing south toward Namibia.
By then, we could feel this part of the journey coming to an end.
We'd been aboard the Voyager for more than three weeks, and the ship had become home.
But we still had one more port before Cape Town.
Walvis Bay, Namibia
We arrived in Walvis Bay on January 10.
We had originally planned to kayak at Pelican Point, but changed our excursion to a four-wheel-drive trip through Sandwich Harbour.
We were very glad we did.
We climbed into Toyota 4WD vehicles and first stopped at shallow wetlands to see flamingos.
After some of the wildlife we'd seen elsewhere on the trip, the flamingos themselves were a little anticlimactic.
From there, we visited the enormous salt ponds outside Walvis Bay.
The water was pink from algae. Our guide explained that seawater is pumped into the ponds and left for months before the salt is harvested.
We saw huge piles of harvested salt and handled a single salt crystal several inches across.
It was surprisingly heavy.
Then we headed south along the Atlantic.
Where the Desert Meets the Ocean
The landscape became increasingly empty.
Ocean on one side.
Desert on the other.
Gray skies overhead.
At one stop, the sand along the beach had a pink tint. Our guide told us the color came from minerals carried north in the ocean from South Africa and deposited along the Namibian coast.
We passed fishermen sitting beside their lines on an otherwise nearly deserted beach.
The ocean was rough and churning.
The entire place felt beautiful and desolate.
Then our driver suddenly turned away from the beach.
And we started climbing the dunes.
Sandwich Harbour
The Toyota climbed and descended enormous sand dunes.
We'd drive up to the top of one and stop, looking out across the desert toward the Atlantic.
Then we'd head down.
Some of the descents were steep enough that it was difficult to imagine driving down them until we actually did.
This wasn't simply transportation through the desert.
The driving itself was part of the experience.
At one point, the guides set up lunch and refreshments among the dunes.
The food was homemade and good.
Then we climbed back into the vehicles and continued.
The entire area was unlike anywhere we'd been before.
The ocean.
The enormous dunes.
The emptiness.
Beautiful and desolate at the same time.
The Namibia Cleanse
At some point during the excursion, our guide showed us water from an underground river beneath the desert.
And, naturally, we drank some.
It seemed like one more interesting part of being out in this extraordinary landscape.
Until the next day.
We both had diarrhea.
I wrote in my notes:
"Both of us have diarrhea from drinking the desert water yesterday. Brilliant."
So apparently our Sandwich Harbour excursion also included an unadvertised Namibia cleanse.
We laughed about it later.
And despite the consequences, the verdict on Sandwich Harbour was still easy:
Great outing.
The Last Sea Day
The next morning we woke off the coast of southern Namibia.
The skies were gray and the ceiling was low.
A large pod of dolphins greeted us.
Cape Town was next.
It was strange to think that our time aboard the Voyager was almost over.
For more than three weeks, we'd had the same room.
The same restaurants.
The same crew.
We'd developed routines.
We knew our way around.
We didn't have to pack every few days.
In a trip filled with unfamiliar places, the ship itself had become familiar.
And then, sometime during those final days aboard, we learned what a Springbok was.
The Springbok
One night we went to dinner in the dining room.
The special that evening was a fillet of Springbok.
For reasons neither of us can explain, both Shirley and I assumed Springbok was a fish.
There was a bit of a language barrier with the waiter.
Shirley specifically ordered what she thought was the fish fillet.
The waiter didn't question it.
Everything seemed fine.
Then the people at a neighboring table received their meals.
I looked over at their plates.
That was clearly not fish.
I turned to Shirley and said something like:
"Well, that's not fish. I don't think you're getting fish."
She wasn't.
Her Springbok arrived.
It was meat.
We still had no idea what Springbok actually was.
So at some point we looked it up.
A Springbok is an antelope.
And, as we soon learned, it is also the animal associated with South Africa's national rugby team.
That made the story even better.
Not long afterward, after we'd arrived in Cape Town, we were walking through a mall and came across an entire kiosk devoted to Springboks rugby merchandise.
There was the Springbok mascot.
Now we knew exactly what Shirley had eaten for dinner.
We laughed.
We considered buying a hat.
We didn't.
But from then on, we certainly knew what a Springbok was.
Cape Town Ahead
On January 12, the Voyager arrived in Cape Town.
We weren't disembarking until the following morning, so the ship remained our home for one more night.
Ahead of us were several more weeks in southern Africa—Cape Town, Botswana, Victoria Falls, the Winelands and Hermanus.
But the cruise itself was ending.
We had boarded the Voyager in Barcelona on December 19.
Since then we'd crossed from Europe to Africa, visited the Canary Islands and Cape Verde, continued down the west coast of Africa, crossed the equator, visited São Tomé, and finally reached Namibia and South Africa.
What had seemed enormous when we planned it had somehow become our everyday life.
What We'll Remember
We'll remember the salt ponds outside Walvis Bay and the enormous crystals of salt.
We'll remember the strange pink tint of the sand along the Atlantic.
We'll remember driving with the ocean on one side and an almost empty desert on the other.
We'll remember our driver suddenly turning away from the beach and heading straight up the dunes.
We'll remember looking down from the tops of those enormous dunes toward the Atlantic.
We'll remember lunch in the desert.
We'll remember drinking water from an underground river in the Namibian desert—and the Namibia cleanse that followed.
We'll remember waking on our final sea day to a large pod of dolphins.
We'll remember how familiar the Voyager had become after more than three weeks aboard.
And we'll remember Shirley ordering the Springbok fillet because both of us thought Springbok was a fish.
We'll remember looking at the neighboring table and realizing that something had gone terribly wrong with our understanding of the menu.
We'll remember having to look up what a Springbok actually was.
And we'll remember arriving in Cape Town and almost immediately finding the answer staring back at us from an entire kiosk of Springboks rugby merchandise.
We probably should have bought the hat.
Would We Do It Again?
Yes—but perhaps that's not quite the right question.
The cruise did something much larger than take us from Barcelona to Cape Town.
It showed us how easily a very long trip could begin to feel normal.
Three-plus weeks aboard a ship had sounded like a major undertaking.
By the end, the Voyager felt like home.
And Cape Town didn't feel like the end of a vacation.
It felt like the next place we were going.
On January 13, we walked off the Voyager in Cape Town.
The cruise was over.
The journey wasn't.