Windhoek Favorites

Favorite thing: Windhoek is the capital on the young republic of Namibia and it is the largest city in Namibia.
It is believed to established as settlement back in 1892 (same as my childhood hometown) on the high plains of the Khomas mountains. The city is well over 1000 m above sea level and winters nights can get very cold. Windhoek is a Twin City with my current home city in Vantaa Finland :)

Fondest memory: The Windhoek tourism Information provide information and advice on current activities taking place in Namibia. They will also provide information about hotels, guesthouses, safari, transportation, sights, etc. There are two offices, one located in the Post street mall and one in Independence avenue. Open from 730 AM to 7 PM.

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Fondest memory: Many of the streets in Windhoek have German names. And some streets have names after head of states in foreign countries, like Oluf Palme street, Robert Mugabe Avenue and Fidel Castro street. Most of the names of from countries with a socialist governance.

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Fondest memory: The main parking area in front of the Supreme Court on one side and kalahari hotel on the other, functions as the main bus stop, taxi and contains a market. This is the place where the long distance buses departs from.

Fondest memory: Days are mostly hot days during November, December, January and February, while nights are cooler. The maximum temperature in January is 31°C.

June, July and August are cold with little rain. Minimum temperature at 5°C in the day and 0°C in the nights. It almost never snows.

Windhoek is a semi-desert region. When I was there in July, the air was so dry that I had problems with my lips and skin.

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Fondest memory: There are ATM's at the airport and in the city. But some banks didn't accept withdrawal from my Visacard and Mastercard. Among them are "Bank Windhoek", with several terminals in the city. But "Nedbank" did. The highest withdrawal amount at one time is 1000N$, which is about 130 USD.
(The rate is OK, slightly better than the rate at Money changers).

Favorite thing: Doing research on a country I want to visit in Asia, i just realised that it's nice to know what bank cards and money can be used in a country. So I thought to make this quick tip for Namibia:
You can use any visa electron bank card here in Namibia. We have ATM's especially the FNB branded ones that take all visa bank cards.
The local currency is exactly equal to the South Africanm Rand (ZAR) in value so when you're checking exchange rates, you can just look up the rand. In fact, you can just use the Rand here too, as it's a legal tender in the country.
The usual average is 1 USD = 7 NAD and 1 GBP = 14 NAD oh and 1 EUR = 10 NAD give or take.
Exchanging any of those currencies here is very easy especially in Windhoek and Swakopmund.

Favorite thing: Before going to Namibia, I didn't know there are in fact two kinds of zebras : the Hartmann's mountain zebras living in the mountains and the Burchell’s zebras that have shadow lines between their black stripes.

We saw them from the top of the mountain and went down to see them closer. In fact, they seemed as curious as we were and didn't run away very quickly.