Author: Chard

Windhoek to Kolmanskop is around 800 kilometres and should take four to five days rather than one. The direct run is tar the whole way and dull. The route worth driving takes in the Quiver Tree Forest, Fish River Canyon,…

Namibia's wildlife is defined by aridity rather than abundance. Game densities are lower than East Africa, and what the country holds instead are animals doing something difficult: desert adapted elephant and lion, free roaming black rhino, and the largest cheetah…

Sesfontein is the last fuel and supplies before Kaokoland proper, a small settlement built around a restored German colonial fort in the northern Kunene. It holds one of Namibia's founding communal conservancies and sits at the junction where the road…

Skeleton Coast National Park protects roughly 16,000 square kilometres of fog bound Atlantic shoreline running from the Ugab River north to the Kunene at the Angolan border. The southern third is open to self drivers holding a permit, while everything…

Closing a place to people for a century turns out to be an effective conservation method. The Sperrgebiet was sealed off in 1908 to protect diamonds and inadvertently protected one of the world's great biodiversity hotspots. It holds around 1,050…

Namibia has some of the darkest skies on earth, and the NamibRand Nature Reserve holds Gold Tier International Dark Sky Reserve status, the first in Africa. Almost no artificial light, exceptionally dry air and 300 clear days a year produce…

Twyfelfontein holds one of the largest concentrations of rock engravings in Africa, with over two thousand images pecked into sandstone in a single Damaraland valley, and it became Namibia's first UNESCO World Heritage site. Guided visits are compulsory and take…

The Walvis Bay Lagoon is a Ramsar listed wetland holding tens of thousands of flamingos and one of the most important shorebird sites in southern Africa, sheltered behind the sand spit of Pelican Point. The peninsula carries a lighthouse and…

Where to stay in Etosha comes down to one decision before any other: inside the park fence or outside it. Namibia Wildlife Resorts runs six rest camps within the boundary, three of them with floodlit waterholes available to guests all…

Namibia has no perennial river that both rises and ends within its own borders. Every river that flows year round is a boundary with another country. Everything in the interior is ephemeral, running for a handful of days a year…