Namibia - about all I knew of Namibia before this trip was that it was in the southern part of the African continent and was famous for incredible wildlife.
Turns out that this was completely true and absolutely not complete. Namibia it turns out is the driest country in the sub-Saharan Africa. It has massive deserts filled with some of the world’s highest sand dunes. It contains arid steppe regions (think African savanna) with some cold areas in its highest elevations near the center of the country. Extending east out from the northern edge is the narrow Caprivi Strip which, unlike the rest of ultra-dry Namibia can receive up to 24” of rain per year. Along Namibia’s western edge is the infamous Skeleton Coast, home of shipwrecks, diamond mines and sand dunes slowly taking back part of the ocean. There are mountains and canyons and endless dunes.
The wildlife is everything that one would expect from that part of the world. This also includes some very rich ocean life along the western shore complements of ocean currents rich in nutrients coming up from Antartica. These cold currents result in dense fog along the coast - likely part of the explanation of the ship wrecks.
This land has been populated since pre-historic times and has gone through colonialism and received many peoples immigrating into it. It is very multi-lingual with English, Afrikaans, and German being common. But there are many more languages spoke by the individual peoples.
We were fortunate to see a sampling of this land and its wildlife and people in a very fast 16 day trip.
For as long as I can remember, being an outdoors person who loves animals and photography, going on a photo safari in Africa has been a dream.
An opportunity to do such a trip to Namibia came up several years ago with an adventure travel group. However, as many people experienced, the COVID pandemic hit and my first try at this was postponed.
Luckily last year as things started settling down, the same group tried again. This time it happened even through the group was really small (some last minute cancelations happened due to travel concerns).
My adventure started with very long flights starting in Toronto and going through Frankfurt on the way to Windhoek, the capital of Namibia.
While we didn’t get up to the wet Caprivi strip, I think that we were able to sample a wide variety of the geography, wildlife and people of Namibia. In addition to what was mentioned above, we got to enjoy a dark sky preserve while sleeping under the open sky (you won’t believe how beautiful the milky way is with no light pollution). We were also led up a rock cliff to see cliff paintings and enjoyed a sampling of a language made completely out of clicking sounds).
In addition to all of the activities, unfortunately for Namibia but great for us, there were practically no tourists to spoil the photos or make us wait. This also had a great side affect where it seemed that the wildlife was much more abundant near the roads and lodges due to the lack of people (as we were leaving there were hopeful signs that tourism in Namibia was starting to return).
We were able to stay in really fun and beautiful lodges, many of which were in private reserves that had been setup to protect the local wildlife. The people we met were fantastic and the food - if you like meat and fish, this is where to go. We ate steaks from most of the major game animals. With that of course were great side dishes, breads, salads, etc.
Along with the adventure company guide we had a fantastic local guide from Capricorn Tours (link to their German website is in the links section - translates well with web based translators or you can send an email to them (address near the bottom of their website). If you can make it down into the area I highly recommend them.
As you can tell, this was one amazing trip and one of my favorites to date.