Category: Namibia

July to October is the strongest window at Etosha and the reason is unusually absolute here: the park has no rivers at all. When the seasonal water disappears, every animal must come to a small number of springs and boreholes,…

Namibia holds the largest free-ranging cheetah population in the world, and around 90 percent of it lives outside protected areas on commercial and communal farmland rather than in national parks. That single fact shapes everything about cheetah conservation here. The…

Etosha's waterholes are the whole basis of game viewing here, because the park has no rivers and every animal has to drink at one of roughly forty springs and boreholes within a day or two. Knowing which ones produce what,…

The Kalahari occupies eastern and southeastern Namibia and it is not a true desert, which surprises most visitors. It receives too much rain to qualify, supports grass, camel thorn woodland and substantial wildlife, and is better described as a semi-arid…

Namibia uses the Namibian dollar, pegged one to one with the South African rand, and both circulate freely here. The rand works in Namibia; the Namibian dollar does not work in South Africa. Cards are fine in towns and useless…

Namibia has around 2.6 million people in a country larger than France and Germany combined, making it the second least densely populated country on earth. Some thirteen ethnic groups and more than a dozen languages coexist here, with English the…

The best time to visit Namibia is the dry season from May to October, with July through September the strongest window for wildlife and the most comfortable for walking and dune climbing. Travellers wanting fewer people and lower rates do…

Namibia was the first African country to write environmental protection into its constitution, and it went further by giving rural communities legal rights over the wildlife on their own land. Around 87 communal conservancies now cover roughly a fifth of…

Fish River Canyon is a gorge roughly 160 kilometres long, up to 27 kilometres wide and around 550 metres deep in southern Namibia, widely described as the largest canyon in Africa. Day visitors see it from rim viewpoints near Hobas,…

Kamanjab is the crossroads of northwestern Namibia, the point where routes to Etosha's western gate, Damaraland, the Kunene and the coast separate. It is a small farming settlement with fuel, a shop and guest farms, and its value is entirely…