Pelican Point Lodge

A lighthouse meant for Durban, now 2 km from the tip

The black and white tower beside the lodge was never meant for Namibia. South Africa ordered it, a cast-iron shaft made in England, for Durban. It went up here in 1932 instead. Before that the point had only a makeshift post light, put up once South African troops had driven the Germans out of Walvis Bay in the First World War. The present lamp dates from 1961 and carries about 40 km.

The light station was sited at the end of the spit, and the spit has since left it behind. Pelican Point grows northwards, by an average of 17.4 m a year between 1895 and 1980 and by more than 22 m a year from 1980 to 1996. The tip is now almost 2 km beyond the light, and the sand north of the lodge has all arrived since the station was set up.

The port’s old control room

The lodge is the port’s former harbour control centre, three storeys of it, together with the old keepers’ quarters, and the Captain’s Cove suite sits in what was the control tower. It belonged to Namport, the ports authority, and the handover was not quiet. In February 2010 The Namibian reported that Hans Möller of Sun Sail Catamarans had put in a plan for the site in 2006, was told for years that a feasibility study was still under way, and then learned that Namport had given the project to another tourism operator, Marius Pretorius, without ever advertising a tender. Namport said it had followed the rules as they stood and expected the work to be finished the following year. The lodge is dated from 2011.

October 2020 on the seal beach

The seal colony is the lodge’s neighbour. Early in October 2020 Naude Dreyer, who has been cutting fishing line off seals on this beach since 2013, found about 5,000 dead premature pups. Simon Elwen of the Namibian Dolphin Project said there was a carcass to every metre where they lay thickest. A couple of thousand dead adults and yearlings followed. The females were thin, and Elwen said the pattern matched die-offs in the early 1990s and 2000s, years of severe food shortage at sea. Dreyer doubted that hunger alone explained it.

Black-backed jackals work the edges of the colony, and guests in 2015, 2024 and 2026 all put them on their lists. Rabies is the newer worry. Namibia’s first rabid seal was confirmed in June 2025, at the lagoon across the bay, and the disease is thought to have reached seals from jackals. Back away from a seal that charges, and report it.

The dolphin with the wrong man’s name

Around 500 Heaviside’s dolphins use Walvis Bay. They grow to 1.7 m at most and live only in the Benguela. The name is a slip: in 1828 the zoologist John Edward Gray confused a Captain Haviside with a surgeon called Heaviside. Off South Africa they move in and out from the shore on a daily routine, but the Walvis Bay animals seem to stay close in at night. Whales are less dependable. A minke beached on the point in September 2024 and died two days later, after people had tried to push it back out.

Alone, cold, and woken by the beam

Two separate parties around the start of September 2023 had the lodge to themselves for a night. One of them found the roof terrace too chilly and windy to sit out on for long. The other, who had moved up into the tower, said it was loud in a blow and that the light going round would bother a light sleeper. Power is deliberately limited, which annoyed a 2019 visitor who couldn’t charge anything fully. Mix-ups over the pickup in town were reported in both 2023 and 2026, so I would confirm the meeting point the day before.