Medary.com

The Bollywood to South Beach Voyage - Regent Seven Seas Voyager, October 29-December 18, 2009

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Twenty-four

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November 25 (Wednesday, Day 28, Walvis Bay, Namibia) -

This has been a problem recently--for both of us

We woke up and got ready for our birding tour. While doing that, Snookums logged in and checked email and read one from our financial adviser that said it was interesting that we had been hitting our Schwab account many, many times which is NOT like us at all. We checked and realized that our Schwab ATM/Visa card that we use on our international trips had been scammed ever since we used it at the mall ATM in Richard’s Bay, South Africa on November 17! We used some of our 3 hours of free phone time to call Schwab at 1 AM EST and canceled the card. Upon further review, 5 transactions were ours and 45 were not. The crook not only used the card at various ATMs around South Africa but had also used it as a Visa card. We’ll have paperwork to fill out when we get back home, but we’ll be fully reimbursed and we have our normal ATM card that we can use for our Brazilian Reals.

More after the jump . . . When we thought about how we used it at Richard’s Bay we wanted to kick ourselves. We went to the first ATM that we saw in the mall after getting off of the shuttle bus. That ATM didn’t seem to work and then a man came over to “help” us. Well, we got it to work just fine, but we think he probably had another card reader installed on top of the real one and that’s how he got all of the necessary data (card number, PIN, etc.). Luckily we woke up 30 minutes earlier than we needed to so we had extra time to deal with this minor nuisance before our birding tour started.

We joined 1 other passenger in our jeep (with our driver guide) and drove around Walvis Bay and saw various water birds and the huge colonies of Cape seals. We learned that Cape seals are actually sea lions. We also saw a lot of jackals near the beaches since they eat seals. And, we saw many dead seals that looked like they died of natural causes. They would just be lying on the beach, past the live seals, due to where the last high tide had pushed them. Walvis Bay also produces a lot of industrial salt and we saw huge salt flats that were pretty pink and purple colors from the enzymes. We ended the tour by going to the top of a large sand dune and then driving straight down it. The side we drove down seemed almost perpendicular to the land, but our jeep didn’t tip over or anything like that.

Flamingos

Jellyfish

Showing some color

It's a desert out there

Jackal

Pink sand

Tubular

A stupid tour jeep driver--he drove too close to the seals and started a stampede into the sea

Flamingos in flight

Young jackal

Our adventurers at the salt lagoons

The ship sailed that afternoon and Snookums worked out. Her goal is to work out 22 times during this entire trip since that’s how many workouts we are missing with our personal trainer while on this trip. She is a bit behind right now but still has enough days to catch up.

Next: Thanksgiving parade!