Namibia

A Travel Guide, Part of Two Mzungus and a Camera

• Overview
• History
• Practical Issues
  • Climate
  • Health
  • Water
• Highlights
• Sample Itineraries
• Lots of Photos
• Maps (coming soon)

When I first stared out into the dunescape at Sossusvlei, Namibia, I felt as though I was looking into God's Soul.  It is unfathomable, endless.  It is the great Exclamation Point at the end of Creation.  I have never--not even at the Grand Canyon--been so humbled and awestruck in my life.

Part of me wishes that we took our trip in reverse order--starting our journey in Italy, and finishing in Cape Town.  That way, Sossusvlei would have been a sort of finale.  As it stands, we came to the Namib desert in the early stages of our trip, and in a sense, everything that followed seemed a little less incredible;  like hearing the 4th movement of Beethoven's 9th before you hear the 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

The Namib Desert is the defining characteristic of Namibia (hence, the name).  It stretches 800 miles along the coastline of southwestern Africa.  The Namib desert is the result of extremely cold water currents, flowing up the coastline of Africa from Antarctica.  The cold waters keep the air cool offshore, while the inland air is warm.  The result is a constant offshore air current which prevents much moisture from penetrating inland.  The same effect can be seen in California, where the cold waters from Alaska flow down the North American coast, creating a desert from Los Angeles to Cabo San Lucas.

Namibia has about 99 different forms of desolation.  Every time that I thought I had seen the most arid, desolate place on earth, we would drive another 50 kilometers down the road, and there was an even more desolate place.  Everywhere you look, the landscape is striking.

In the South, Fish River Canyon is the second largest canyon in the world (next to the Grand Canyon).  To the West of Fish River Canyon, the Diamond Restricted Zone looms like a mysterious CIA compound.  This area, a 200 km x 150 km off-limits zone is owned and jealously guarded by the DeBeers Diamond company.  With tacit government authorization, they will shoot anyone caught sneaking into the Restricted Zone.  Supposedly, there are enough diamonds strewn about within the zone to shatter the world diamond price.  The DeBeers company would be rather displeased if this happened.

North of the coastal town of Luderitz sits between the barren Restricted Zone and the even-more-barren Namib-Naukluft National Park.  It is here, within the national park where the dunes are at their most majestic, towering over 1200 feet tall.  This 300 kilometer wide park is totally inaccessible, except for a narrow, ancient floodplain.  Sossusvlei is a dead lake in the heart of the park.  Running due East from Sossusvlei, a 1-km wide floodplain carves a navigable path to the central plateau, 100 kilometers inland.

Sandwiched between Namib-Naukluft and the Skeleton Coast, the town of Walvis Bay is frequently shrouded in fog, and yet it never rains.  The Skeleton Coast stretches another 400 km northwards with barren dunes and rocky shorelines that are littered with shipwrecks.

In northern Namibia, near Angola, Etosha Pan National Park is an oasis in the middle of the desert.  Here, the big game can almost always be seen in great abundance (...of course, I had bad luck here).