Cape Cross, Namibia

Cape Cross marks the spot where the first European explorers landed in Namibia, in this case in the form of Diego Cao in 1486. The date on the stone that marks the spot where the Portuguese landed is also interesting: 6665 - years carefully counted from clues given in the bible! As was the habit of early Portuguese explorers, he and his shipmates erected a cross (in stone) which was promptly removed by German explorers some 400 years later! The original can be seen in Berlin! Don't worry, a replacement was constructed a few years later and stands today as a monument to discovery!

The Germans tried hard to make Cape Cross economically viable... and for a number of years achieved a certain amount of success through the selling of pelts, oil and meat of the enormous seal colony which they found there (and which survives today - see below), and by setting up a guano-production centre - Guano is valued as a fertiliser that replenishes over-used land with the nutrients necessary to support plants and crops. It comes from the smelly much that is created by generations of birdlife perched in cramped environments, such as those found in the Cape Cross area. So while some explorers were busy with the long and difficult task of finding diamonds, others were making themselves rich on the back of smelly garden fertilisers!

Find out all you ever wanted to know about Guano but were too afraid to ask!

Thousands of sealions.........
Imagine the noice and the smell....

It is worse!

We went to see the sealions just after lunch, it was a very bad idea. Some of our group had to go back into the bus just to prevent them from vomitting.

Cape Cross, Namibia, on the south Atlantic coast, is the point at which Europeans first set foot in Namibia and southern Africa. This occurred back in 1484, as Diego Cao and a band of Portuguese explorers made landfall.

The reason that they picked Cape Cross? It's probably not the harbor, folks....

Sailors on long voyages, especially back in the 16th century, had serious food issues. The main issue was that they kept running out of food. There is a HUGE seal colony at Cape Cross. Hundreds of thousands of seals make the Cape Cross beach and rock jetties their home and breeding grounds. Hundreds of thousands more can be seen playing out in the surf, trying to dodge the (also) hungry sharks.

Now folks, this many seals DO have an odor, so be sure to try and stay downwind. But, this is truly an impressive site to see. And the access is very up-close and personal.

I'll be that Cao and his crew got kind of tired of eating seals after a while, though. :)

See the sealions at Cape Cross. At this cape there is an old cross, but more interesting is the colony sealions living there. Thousands of sealions smell bad! So don´t eat just before you go. It will upset your stomach.

Enjoy the SEALS at Fur Seal Coast, in the north west of Namibia. A smelly place where thousands of seals have some rest and fish and live and grow. They are so close you feel the temptation to touch them, but as long as you try you do nothing but realize how much agressive they are.
The sad point is: seals are a danger for the locals.Both seals and human being compete for the fish (or that´s the excuse), and guess who wins the game!!! .. there is a slaugher house in about 300 m where once a year people from the closest village go and kill, I don´t know, many of them with their knives, and then they sell their fats, and meat and furs. Isn´t it a coincidence that every year people see fewer adult males among the seals? (they have the best qualities to sell at a higher price in the market).

Cape Cross is the famous spot of the seal colony, here there are few tens of thousands of seals living in the spot for the whole year around. Lots seabirds of course and jackals as well.