Last time we visited this part of the world, on the Skeleton Coast of Namibia, we bumped in to my ex boss attending a conference at the Swakopmund Hotel.

This time we met up with Marc & Paula, the British couple we met in Etosha, for a couple of days of beer drinking, fishing and sand driving.

The beer drinking and sand driving was far more successful than the fishing, but the lack of fish was more then compensated by the generous gift of 6 live crayfish from a South African neighbour at our Swakopmund campsite.

The sand driving involved a day trip to Walvis (Whale) Bay lagoon, an internationally important wetland habitat for wading birds, pelicans and greater and lesser flamingos. We drove around the lagoon past salt works and out to the promontory of Pelican Point, famous for, you've guessed it, a seal colony. We had timed our visit, albeit an accident, at the prime time for seal pup births.

The joy of seeing the pups was twinged with stress and emotion as we realised how easily the pups and mothers are separated from one another, especially when the dominant beach master blubbers his way through the colony in search of receptive females.

We watched in horror as a pup, long separated from it's mother, clearly dehydrated and sand blasted by the wind, ran the gauntlet of pecking herring gulls as it struggled back towards the colony, only to be bitten and tossed away by a seal that obviously was not mother.

Seal mothers really need to brush up on their parenting skills, there were dead pups all over the colony, but at least the gulls and jackals had plenty to eat. The sight of the latter, on a sand dune coastline totally devoid of vegetation, was a testament to the adaptability of animals in the natural world.

On the way to and from Pelican Point, driving in thick sand and following tracks that were rapidly being covered, we caused thousands of terns (Artic terns perhaps, they are incredibly difficult to ID) to fly up, obscuring Marc & Paul's Defender in what looked like a snowstorm.

The flamingos are an incredible sight, thousand of both species working the tidal edge with their beaks. Pelicans, like old-fashioned flying boats, skim the waters of the lagoon just above wave height, elegant flyers despite their huge size and comic waddle on land. These more famous species make up a small proportion of the birds here; there are numerous waders of all shapes and sizes, with beak shapes perfectly designed for their feeding preferences. One of the most beautiful (and easily recognisable for once) is the Pied Avocet, gracefully using an upturned beak to sift food from the mud.

Shame on humanity then that the lagoon, by latest estimates, will have silted up in 10 years from now. The Kuiseb River that flushed the sand from the lagoon has long since been diverted, and the Walvis Bay harbour (one of the few deep water ports between the Equator and Cape Town) has plans to expand capacity. The beautiful coastline between Walvis Bay and Swakopmund 30 kilometres to the north is becoming a ribbon development of pig ugly houses surrounded by even uglier high concrete walls to keep out the sand.

Any of you wishing to see millions of wetland birds in prime estuarine habitat should visit before it is too late!

Fortunately a place that will never be developed is the Namib Naukluft desert. This massive park, about the size of Switzerland, protects one of the oldest deserts in the world. It stretches from Luderitz in the south to the coast at Swakopmund and encompasses the famous sand dunes of Sossusvlei, which we climbed on a previous visit.

To experience this desert, albeit a tiny segment, we drove a circular 155 kilometre self guided tour known as the Welwitschia Drive. Welwitschia are Namibia's most famous plant and still fascinate scientists who are not sure whether to class them as succulents or conifers.

The ability of these twin leaved woody ground hugging plants to survive a desert in which rain may not fall for several years is incredible, it is believed they get their moisture from the occasional sea mists that move in from the Atlantic coast. They are named after Friedrich Welwitschia, an Austrian scientist who found them in 1859. They only grow in the Namib, and on this drive you can see hundreds of them, including one believed to be 1500 years old.

Two bushes eek out an existence in this barren landscape, the prosaically named dollar bush and the ink bush. Both can go without water for years. Lichen are the other main survivor here, though nature has not designed them to withstand the onslaught of idiot 4x4 drivers who continue to drive off road despite the warning signs about the fragility of the plants and landscape.

In such a harsh environment the last thing we expected to see were mammals, but amazingly we came across two Springbok antelope and 4 Ostriches, master survivors!

Talking of survivors we met 3 New Zealanders at our Swakop campsite who clearly hadn't the decency to top themselves after their country's dismal rugby world cup performance. They've taken 4 months to drive a Landrover Discovery from Britain to Swakopmund via East Africa, about the same time as we took to do Botswana!

Perhaps we need to move faster!