April 12: At Sea

Another Sea Day, one of 5 in a row until we reach Gambia.
Tonight we will cross the Prime Meridian AND the Equator at 11:23 (or something like that)...00.00.00 Latitude and 00.00.00 Longitude. There will be parties...of course. It'll be hard for me to stay up since I finally got the cough that is going around, so I'm getting sleepy taking the cold pills.

We were sorry to not have another day in Cape Town since we really had no time to see the city itself. Our drive to the Cape of Good Hope was lovely and made us want to see more of that area, but it must wait for another day.

Walvis Bay, Namibia was our next stop in Africa. Chris took a 4x4 ride on the incredible sand dunes that go for miles (photos later). Meanwhile I took the shuttle bus into the small town (very small, but neat homes) to a lagoon that held thousands of flamingos. I've never seen so many (white ones, too...even though they eat the same crustaceans.)

After that, more Sea Days until Luanda, Angola which is a very large city, but we were given admonishments if we went ashore to not photo government buildings, guards, guarded buildings, don't use ATMs or credit cards, use only prime condition dollars, go in groups (yes, one group of 4 still had a mugging that was thwarted by police), not to drink the water or eat anything that had come into touch with their water and to not even wash our hands in their water...and don't even buy their bottled water because it may have been "rebottled." Too many "don'ts" to make us want to go ashore much...but we did, just to a local market stall area where we did find several artists selling their wares, so we bought a small painting. (We usually like to collect tiles from places we visit but we have not seen any in Africa at all, so a small painting will have to do.)

Now we have 5 Sea Days in total to Gambia, and the next day's port in Senegal. Unfortunately our internet is down and probably won't be working until Senegal, so there's no hope of posting anything, let alone any photos I'm behind in until after that.

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