Ever Heard of Swakopmund? Us neither, until we started planning our trip to Namibia.

After freezing our butts off in Namibia, we were really looking forward to getting to the beach where we hoped things would warm up. Winter is a great time to visit Namibia, but we weren’t prepared for how cold it would get.

And when we got to Swakopmund, we really got a reminder of how cold, cold could be.

We drove a few hours from the capital city of Windhoek (still can’t pronounce it properly). The roads in Namibia are near to perfect but can be boringly straight. Liz can sleep anywhere and took the opportunity to catch a few zz’s.

Swakop actually has a large population of 75,000 people but it certainly didn’t feel like it. It sits on the edge of the Namib Desert and is a big tourist destination. Apparently in summer time, people come from Windhoek for their break and get the cool Atlantic breeze.

I don’t think the waters ever warm up though. Every day fog rolls in from the ocean, and this is what waters the desert, hence, how plants survive, without rainfall. When we were there, the fog never left. When we went further north, the fog lifted but sat out in the ocean.

Swakop has some great food places. We found a nice German bakery on the pier (check out the video HERE). There was a really eerie feel at the end of the pier. The waves were big and the fog thick as soup. Liz got disorientated and didn’t like it at the end of the pier.

The town is very German with street names and the buildings all giving you a feel of old Germany. People’s accents were really thick and hard to understand. Locals presumed we spoke Afrikaans because we were white.

One of the highlights was discovering a German bakery that sold gluten free bread. This has been near impossible to find. They had run out so we returned early the next morning and were successful in our quest! To have jam on toast after many months was pure delight.

Swakop has some great touristy things to do. We chose to visit the Kristall Gallerie  which has one of the largest cut gemstones and crystals in the world on show. We weren’t allowed to take photos so you’ll need to check out their website.

There’s plenty of things you can do in Swakop and it’s a great place to see the coast – if there’s no fog!

Some of the roads in Swakop are covered in sand and salt. They’d had a big sand storm a week before we arrived but they had cleaned up a lot of the sand.

The pier on the clearest day we had when we were there.