Situated at the coast, Swakopmund is Namibia’s premier holiday resort. Thousands of Namibians and people from outside the country alike flock to the coast during summer holidays and long weekend. The cool Namibian coast offers a relief from the heat of the interior and this has made it the most preferred holiday destination during summer by most local people.
Swakopmund is an adventure town and recreation is the town’s number one draw card with a wide range of activities to suit all ages. It is well known for sports such as sand boarding, deep sea fishing and beach angling, quad biking, horse riding, hot air balloon and other extreme sports such as sky diving. One thing Swakopmund isn’t is boring.
The people of Swakopmund are predominately a quirky mix of German-Namibian residents and German-Germans, who feel right at home with distinctly German architecture and atmosphere. In addition to this, Swakopmund is now becoming a melting pot of Namibian cultures, and you can find people of most of Namibia’s’ 11 different ethnic groups that migrate to the coastal town for employment.
The name Swakopmund is actually a combination of two words from two different tribes namely Nama and German. Swakop, a Nama word means ‘an excrement or opening’ is the name of the river that reaches the sea at the town, while mund is a German word which means ‘mouth’ together meaning mouth of Swakop. The Swakop River during floods collects and transport mud, pieces of vegetation, dead trees and dead animal corpses. This eventually gets dumped into the Atlantic Ocean and to the local people it created a rather unpleasant site rendering the name an ‘excrement opening’.
