Daily Archives: December 27, 2010

A walking tour of Windhoek

Acknowledgement: This walking tour came straight from the guidebook I was using – Bradt Guide Namibia. I’d highly recommend the tour and the guidebook was pretty good, if a little heavier than I’d have preferred.

I set off early in the morning. A strange side-effect of travelling is that I appear to wake up far earlier than I would otherwise expect to. Perhaps it has to do with sleeping in a dorm full of strangers. Although, it may also be to do with the fact that I was going to bed ridiculously early – almost to bed with the sun, so I suppose up with the sun wasn’t unreasonable. Given that I was trying to explore a particularly hot place at the height of summer, it turned out to be useful. Most days, I’d head off early and be back at the backpackers by mid-day, in time for a deliciously cool swim before the afternoon thunderstorm gathered.

After the standard breakfast of pancakes (supplied as part of the cost of staying at the backpackers – Cardboard Box Backpackers, Windhoek FTW), I set off walking. It was already getting warm but the day was early enough that the morning cool hadn’t quite burned off yet, so things were just fresh enough to be pleasant. I walked down along Dr Frans Indongo Street towards the shopping centre of town. My first stop was Post Street Mall to see the meteors. The Gideon Meteors are a group of 33 meteor-pieces found in Gideon, Namibia, are part of the largest and possibly oldest meteor fall ever found. They’re shiny and black and red and apparently metallic. The largest weighs 650kg.

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