Windhoek-First Day in Namibia

Kiah and I arrived in Windhoek earlier today. I after my 27 hour flight and Kiah after her 13 hour flight are in our hotel room planning for the next day. We arrived at about 2 pm, and after going through customs (which a local told us they just updated their system last week ) arrived at our hotel a few hours later. The airport, Hosea Kutako International Airport (WDH) is about 20 miles outside from the main part of the city. We were expecting to see nature and animals and already on our way here, we already saw 3 monkeys and an ostrich on the side of the road.

After checking in to our hotel, we went for a walk to buy water and explore the city. We were told by our taxi driver that stores would be open, even on a Sunday but when we started walking around, we couldn't find anything open. We were able to walk through the mall, but they were already closed as we walked through at about 6. We even tried to find something to eat and thought just by walking around we might find something but still had a hard time trying to find something. We finally decided to walk to the Hilton hotel we could see from a far figuring that there should be food places near the tourists and finally found a place to eat. 

We ate at a very American inspired place called "Spur". I took a picture of the restaurant and if you notice, a couple of the Spur staff gave me great big smiles. I had a very delicious t-bone from Namibian beef which was one of the best I have had in a long time. Our waitress, Devine, was a local girl of about 17 or 18 who said we had "popped her cherry" because we were the first Americans she had ever met. She also wanted to make sure we were safe in the country and reminded us to keep our items close to us. She was very sweet and asked if we could keep in touch.

We found Windhoek to be a very quiet and slow paced city. My Namibian friends had warned me about that, but I thought they were telling me that because they knew I have lived in Los Angeles all my life and anything slower than that, would be considered quiet. But in general, we saw very few people driving or walking around. It is one of the quietest cities I have ever visited. I cannot stress how quiet the city was. We took a couple of photos and didn't have any problems trying to get cars out of the shot because there were none. Today we took it slow and hope tomorrow we will see more people and get to check off some of the items on our to see list.