N A M I B I A: My bucket list trip
“other-worldly. it’s like the moon. one big desert. my favourite country.”
when people would describe Namibia to me before my trip, these are the words they would use to describe it, and tbh i didn’t know much else about the country.
… SAY NO MORE! sounds epic. sounds like an adventure. i saw some photos of red sand dunes contrasted against bright blue sky, some unreal starry night skies with rocky landscapes, and i knew I had to get there at some point in the near, near future.
so when i met Evie, my new friend from the UK, at Atlantic Point Backpackers and during one of our first convos floated the idea that we both wanted to go to namibia and she had 2 weeks off at the end of january, it looked like the window of opportunity had come.
our 10-day road trip around namibia was one of the most epic adventures of my entire life. truly the trip of a lifetime.
Planning your trip
Let me first start by saying that Namibia isn’t an easy place to travel… I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to everyone. I think novice travellers or people like, well, my mom might be a bit thrown off by how remote it is and how many hours are spent on bumpy unpaved roads that seem to lead to nowhere. BUT I would DEFINITELY recommend it to anyone that loves adventure!!
And if you want to go but don’t know where to start, remember to check out my Adventurelust Trip Planning and On-Call Travel Buddy services, where I can give you all my insider tips and recos (I have some strong thoughts on do’s and don’ts), and add an extra level of support for your trip through this epic yet remote country.
And also while we’re here, don’t forget travel insurance! You can use my link for SafetyWing Travel Insurance, which is a great nomad insurance that I use and it covers COVID medical costs :)
Okay let’s get to road trippin’!
(Also sorry for the grammar roller coaster on this blog post, I wrote half on my phone and half on my laptop where I use proper grammar, and welp to be honest can’t be bothered to change it! I’m sure you’ll cope)
Namibia is all about the landscapes… they are breathtaking. one hour you’re driving through lush bush-covered mountains (we were in rainy season so it was super green, bless), the next you are in a flat dusty desert, and you passed maybe one other vehicle during that time. sand dunes, stripey mountains, random canyons, deserted sand-covered “towns”, piles of boulders that looked like the moon. this country is epic.
i was fortunate to be able to collaborate with Gondwana Collection, which has lodges all over the country that serve up mouth-watering food, my new fave white wine, amazing hospitality, and incredible sunset viewpoints. it’s the go-to lodge chain in Namibia and trust me when I say we felt spoiled af.
we hopped in our little lime green Jimny Suzuki (he goes by Jimmy) and were off!
some tips for namibia:
always have water and food in the vehicle
know how to change a tire and deal with other car issues
take out local cash — most park entry fees (sossusvlei, twyfelfontain, burnt mtn/organ pipes, even etosha) were $170 namibian dollars for two of us. (that’s $14 cad or $7 cad each. for a freaking safari. wild.)
get a local sim card or better yet, local satellite phone
download the offline maps of namibia on google maps and maps.me
have plenty of music/podcasts downloaded. drive days ranged from 3-6 hours
always wear sunscreen
fill up at every gas station you see
go early to the attractions like sossusvlei and twyfelfontain — it gets HOT by 9-10am
bring shoes/boots for the sand dunes if you go after 9/10am so your feet dont burn to a crisp
catch every sunrise and sunset you possibly can. they are pure magic.
remember, tia (this is africa): not everything is how you’re used to or what you’d expect, not everything makes sense. just gotta roll with it!
Kalahari
we spent our first 3-hour drive squealing over how cool the landscapes were already and how happy we were to actually finally be in Namibia, and then arrived at Kalahari Anib. the stoke was HIGH. so luxurious, such a warm welcome into the country. food, wine, dessert, beautiful resort, passed out.
our sunrise game drive was unexpected as we didn’t even know it was even a thing there, but it came with one of the most stunning sunrises of my life. evie and i watched it from our coffee stop on the red dunes and when the glowy pink ball had risen above the horizon, we just looked at each other in awe. we knew we were in for some next level magic at that point!!
it was sooo amazing to be back out in the african bush, smelling the scents of nature, hearing the birds and crickets, feeling that morning game drive breeze. nothin’ like it. we even had an amazing giraffe sighting of 12 of them grazing in the distance on a beautiful landscape. i cried happy tears twice that morning.
Namib Desert/Sossusvlei
as much as we wanted to stay and enjoy the beautiful property at Kalahari Anib, we had a 3-4 hr drive ahead of us so got back on the road! (when i say road i mean bumpy dirt/gravel road, which remained that way for about 75% of our trip. buckle up!!)
Namib Desert Lodge is set against the most stunning red petrified sand dunes. the property is unbelievable and there are wild ostrich, oryx, springbok, zebra, etc grazing right off the driveway to the lodge. you can rent an ebike and cruise around the property or go on a sunrise drive up the dunes, which turned out to be one of our favourite experiences of the entire trip. incredible viewpoint after incredible viewpoint (it was just getting stupid at this point), g&ts were flowin, sundowner snacks, beautiful evening breeze.
but before that was our morning at sossusvlei, which are what actual adventurer/photographer dreams are MADE OF.
from the lodge it’s an hour drive to the gate, which opens at 6:15 - get there then. our sunrise on the way, with a painted sky and mountain silhouettes in the distance, was ri-dic.
we entered the park and watched the landscape transform into red dunes. we saw some oryx, the iconic desert antelope and the animal on namibia’s currency, strolling against the desert backdrop. the odd ostrich plodding along in the distance. insane. we saw a hunchbacked brown hyena lurk across our path, which is such a rare and cool sighting. everything is so photo-worthy and then we get to the dunes and our minds are blown even further.
as per an old german man’s reco (“this is what you do here!”), we climbed up dune 45. it was so exciting and fun and spontaneous until evie mentioned that perhaps one wrong step could send us flying down the entire sandy slope, and from then on i was terrified. but as i ran down the side of the dune i realized i didn’t need to be scared, as the sand slowed and cushioned every step, and it was soso amazing. the landscape from up there is just unrealistic. this was about a 45 min round trip hike, and we did it barefoot.
drove 15 more mins to the official entry of sossusvlei, where we caught the shuttle for fear of lil jimmy getting stuck (this was a good call and i would recommend). this is where things turned real desert-y and it was INCREDIBLE. panels of clay dried up by the sun cracked beneath our bare feet as we rushed the 1.2 km (15-20 min) to deadvlei, the iconic salt pan with dead trees, set beneath Big Daddy, one of the tallest sand dunes in the world (could’ve hiked this too but i’m not a psychopath). we knew time was tickin before the sand got en fuego hot, so we got there asap, did our best to take in its beauty and take pics before rushing back to shade. these dunes were probably the most surreal thing we saw all trip — ive never seen anything like it. would go back in a heartbeat.
went and saw sossusvlei pan, which was abnormally filled with water from the rains, and that was our day!! too hot to linger in the desert but an absolutely EPICCCCCC morning!!
Solitaire
Solitaire was just a stopover, we didn’t stay here (although I do think there was exactly one lodge, along with one gas station, a bakery or two, and plenty of old broken down cars that are covered with sand) BUT it’s worth mentioning because
a) it apparently has the best apple crumble (so sorry tim, I live a life of regret for not getting this) and
b) it’s just a shining example of how wonderfully weird and deserted Namibia is. there are so few signs of life and then you see a little teeny sandswept town like this that is teeming with this quirky character. the wild wild west of south africa.
Swakopmund
from there we headed to the coast, to a town we have given the tagline “weinerschitzel and white supremacy”.
let me try and explain. namibia is incredible but much of its architecture, names, culture, food on every menu, are german (who only colonized it for like 30 years but clearly left a mark). even the two go-to bars (for white people) were both german beerhouses. then you have the south african side, which it mimics in terms of its currency (1 namibia dollar = 1 south african rand), covid restrictions (9pm curfew), afrikaans culture, etc. i was lost on what NAMIBIA’s culture is itself. no offence to anyone, but swakop felt stark and a little lacking in character to me (granted i know things were quiet because of covid), and i did witness some encounters that reeked of white supremacy, for example a white lady coming out and yelling at this group of Black acapella singers (who had beautiful voices) to get away from her store. NOT okay. plus, there is a lingering fog so it’s almost always cloudy there. just wasn’t my vibe okay?
we did LOVE the breakfast at our lodge The Delight Swakopmund, omelettes and mimosas FTW. we had dinners at The Tug and pasta at the Deli by the beach, and drinks at Heart Beat and Brauhaus and Bar Zandernaam (ok i LOVED that one, charming little cocktail bar). but ya. not my favesies.
from there we drove an hour to Cape Cross to see/smell the world’s largest breeding colony of Cape Fur Seals. seals on seals on stinky seals. the babies were soooo cute and there were so many!! it’s worth checking out, not worth lingering though.
Damaraland
the dunes at Sossuslvei were the most breathtaking landscape we saw, but i was also OBSESSED with damaraland!! it’s big rocky outcrops sporadically rising out of the flat desert ground, table mountain and lions head twins in the distance, all very barren and moon-like and, of course, we were the only humans on the road.
we had another epic sunrise drive and then a day of exploring the crazy unique rock formations of damaraland. went to Burnt Mountain and the Organ Pipes, and then did a walking tour of Twylfelfontain where we saw amazing engravings of animals on the rocks (rhinos and giraffes stretching to the sky to try and summon the rain) and were obsessed with the red sandstone boulders everywhere. it was soooo beautiful!!
some of our most amazing sunsets were experienced from Damara Mopane Lodge. the lodge literally had zero other guests so we would lounge at the pool all by ourselves, and we did the 1ish hour hike up and around the mountain, which was so peaceful and silent and had some beautiful flora and fauna to take in. we split a bottle of wine (Groote Post Old Man’s Blend) every single night of our trip, stuffed our faces with the most amazing food at dinner, and rolled on over to a 9-10pm bedtime.
BLISS.
Etosha
Next up was the spot we’d been eagerly anticipating all trip… ETOSHA! Both of us are OBSESSED with game drives and wildlife and even our taster drive at Kalahari, and our sundowner drive at Namib Desert, were so amazing that we couldn’t wait for the real thing, the real safari. Bring onnnnnn the leopards and elephants (spoiler, we saw neither).
What we did see was some epic lion sightings (I haven’t really had solid lion sightings before) and sososos many babies as it was baby season. SOOOO cute. The little springbok’s legs were dainty little sticks and the little zebra was sooo teeny tiny, when it faced us head-on you could barely see it :(:(:( also saw baby ostriches which was really cool, and baby wildebeest and heartbeast.
The lion sighting was on our game drive through the lodge, when we saw 8 of them lying down just as the sun was rising. They perked up to a herd of wildebeest not far off, and even started lurking and getting into hunt mode. It was sooo cool to watch them so alert and attentive. Eventually the wildebeest continued in the other direction (they caught wind of the lions) but it was pretty cool to witness, I’ve never seen a hunt before!
We did two game drives ourselves in our little jimmy, and one 11-hour-long game drive through the lodge. Self driving was a great option and we loved cruising around!
Etosha Safari Lodge was 10 km outside of the park and omg it was stunning. We saw the most insane sunset with the rains in the distance, and then they poured down on us so hard as lightning flashed and thunder rumbled. Don’t know how we fell asleep that night but it was like a very dramatic and incredible movie. I bless the rains down in Africa, you know? magic.
Windhoek + COVID testing
From there, our road trip around Namibia was coming to a close. We drove the 5 hours back to Windhoek (which were all on a real paved road so they flew by) and checked into Urban Camp, a vibey glamping hostel with a bar that fills with locals, for 3 nights to do our Covid tests and wait for results before we could fly out.
This is where our freakishly perfect trip took a nosedive. We spent a couple days in Windhoek (pizza at Klein Windhoek guest house was unreal and Joe’s beer house is also a fun quirky vibey spot), but had gotten our tests at OSH-Medical (Pathcare was full) and I got my results back 24 hours later, which were negative. Evie’s, after many follow-up calls to the clinic and lab, having them tell her the results were pending - oh then they “lost them, sorry ma’am” - oh wait now they have them... were COVID POSITIVE.
while this “results” process was FAR from reassuring, the fact that we’d had next to zero interactions with any other humans, often the only guests at the lodge, in the most unpopulated and remote areas of NAMIBIA, combined with no symptoms in sight, my negative test result and sharing a jimny, room, tent, bed, etc over the last 10 days... covid could be anywhere but somethinggg was a bit suspishhh.
so i flew back to cape town solo and after 3 days in namibia’s ministry of health’s self isolation unit (let’s just say it’s no Gondwana), evie got a new test which came out negative (shocker) and got on the next flight back.
we’re now both back in cape town sipping bubbly with a lion’s head view and in hindsight it’s hilarious.
but moral of the story is that there are risks of travelling with covid, we gotta be prepared for any scenario, remember to go with the flow and make the most out of every situation, and also #tia = this is africa, baby. lean in.
I hope you enjoyed reading about my Namibian adventures and if you are planning on going for yourself, got some major inspo and tips! Don’t forget to check out my Adventurelust Trip Planning & On-Call Travel Buddy services if you’d like any help planning your trip (it would be my absolute HONOUR).
Back in Cape Town for the next 2 months (going to Namibia did not extend my 90-days, sad face) so let the adventure continue!!!!