Ninety seconds on Swakopmund Museum
Come for a mounted rhino, a rebuilt dentist's surgery and a propeller from a plane lost in the Dunedin Star rescue, and see the Cape Cross seal dioramas before you drive up the coast.
Namibia's animals fill the large main hall as mounted specimens, from a zebra and a cheetah to a brown hyena, beside horse-drawn carriages, an early ox wagon and an old Land Rover. Most labels are in English and German, and there is no set route through the rooms.
Smaller rooms hold a German colonial dining room and kitchen, cabinets of old telephones and toy cars, and model ships. A brewing section sets a scale model of a German brewery beside bottles of the Namibian lagers still sold today.
Ask at the desk to have one of the documentary films screened. The shop sells books, postcards and stamps, and the cashiers will show you the red post box for sending a card.
Swakopmund, and further afield
German colonial streets run down to a cold Atlantic here, and the town has served as Namibia's holiday coast since the railway reached it.…
Namibia's deep water port works at one end of this town and a Ramsar wetland at the other. South Africa held the enclave until 1994, four…
Anglers built this place and still fill it in season, a grid of holiday houses on the gravel where the Omaruru reaches the sea. The salt…