Salty Flamingos and Other Stories from Namibia {Namibia - Part 3}

I like flamingos. Their luminous pink colour is rather enticing. Prior to my recent Namibia trip I had only even seen a handful of flamingos in zoo’s and bird parks. They weren’t very pink, which was rather disappointing.

We found the flamingos in Walvis Bay by accident. We were driving around aimlessly (as you do) and we turned a corner and TADA. A bazillion flamingoes, just chilling in a lagoon. Munching on flamingo food.

Me: “Flamingos are pink because they eat prawns hey?”

Tyron: “Uh no, I’m sure they eat” … bla bla scientific stuff

Me: “No, prawns are pink, flamingos are pink, therefore they eat prawns.

Tyron: Rolling eyes “Ok”

I googled it. We were both kind of right. Flamingos eat algae and Brine shrimp. Shrimp are sort of prawns. So there. 😛

After marvelling at the flamingos for a hundred hours,we got back in the car and continued on the aimless drive. All of a sudden the houses gave way to desert and I saw a wild dog just prancing around. He moved too quickly for me to take a photo. Further down the road we were greeted with the sight of giant white mountains. Salt mountains. We happened to come across a salt factory, and just behind it were kilometres of salt pans. I was captivated. Dusty pink in some areas, bright white in others, salt pans are magical. The ground is leveled off and seawater is pumped in and left to evaporate, and what’s left is tons and tons of salt. It looked a bit like snow. Is it weird that I wanted to take a tour of the salt factory? Not that that kind of thing was offered, but I really would have liked to know more about how salt is made.

Flamingos love the salt pans and we saw many more whilst driving around them. Mingos err’where.

We also saw a ridiculous amount of (gah, what’s the word, I want to say gherkins, but that’s definitely not right, why am I stuck on the word gherkin), spotty chickens… I should know this.

*It’s been 2 minutes* the word I was looking for is Guinea Fowls. We saw tons of Guinea Fowls on the streets of Swakopmund. I had a Guinea Fowl themed bedroom as a kid. (Why mom?)