A country · 63 places · 9 regions
Namibia, all of it.
63 curated places across 9 regions — photographed, mapped, and noted with the season each is best in.
The 4 biggest regions — Khomas Region, Karas Region, Erongo Region and Hardap Region — read below as chapters, with 5 more waiting past them.
Chapter I · Khomas Region · 10 places
Khomas Region
Namibia's relaxed highland capital blends German colonial-era landmarks such as the Christuskirche with modern African city life and a notable craft beer tradition. Most journeys through the country start here, and its museums and Katutura township tours give useful context before heading into the desert.
via Wikimedia CommonsChapter II · Karas Region · 7 places
Karas Region
Fish River Canyon in southern Namibia is the largest canyon in Africa and the second largest in the world after the Grand Canyon, stretching 160 kilometres in length and reaching 550 metres in depth. The rim viewpoints near Hobas offer sweeping panoramas of the sinuous river far below. The 87-kilometre hiking trail through the canyon is among the most demanding multi-day walks in southern Africa and is only open during the cooler winter months.
✦ May to September · $$
Chapter III · Erongo Region · 5 places
Erongo Region
Swakopmund lies on the Atlantic at the mouth of the ephemeral Swakop River, 30 kilometres north of Walvis Bay and about 350 kilometres west of Windhoek. The town is squeezed between two absolutes: the cold Benguela current on one side, which drags fog inland most mornings and holds air temperatures near 15 to 20 °C almost all year, and the Namib on the other, whose dune belt begins immediately south of the riverbed and runs unbroken to the horizon. North of the river the ground turns to gravel plain. The result is a seaside town where people wear jackets in January and where the desert starts at the end of the last street. The story behind it. Captain Curt von François founded the settlement in 1892 as the main harbour for German South West Africa, because the only natural deep-water anchorage on the coast, at Walvis Bay, was British. The choice was poor. The Mole breakwater silted up within years, a wooden jetty followed in 1905 and proved inadequate, and construction of a steel jetty began in 1914. Imperial administration filled the town with offices and villas in a heavy Wilhelmine style — the Woermannhaus of 1906 with its Damara tower, now a public library, the Hohenzollernhaus of 1906, the railway station of 1901 that is now a hotel. South African forces took the colony in 1915, harbour work stopped and the jetty became a promenade. The town's German inheritance is visible and audible to this day, and so is the reckoning with it: the Swakopmund Genocide Museum, founded in 2015 by the artist and activist Laidlaw Peringanda, documents the German colonial genocide against the Herero and Nama, whose survivors were held in a camp here. On screen. Swakopmund is the base town for the most celebrated desert shoot of the last two decades. George Miller had planned to make Mad Max: Fury Road at Broken Hill in New South Wales, but unusual rain turned that desert green with wildflowers, and in November 2011 the production relocated to Namibia. Principal photography began in July 2012 with most of the work based in the Dorob National Park along the coast near Swakopmund and Walvis Bay, and it ran for months, with the cast living in the town and the war rig convoys running on the gravel plains and coastal dunes. In February 2013 a draft report from the Namibian Coast Conservation and Management Project accused the production of damaging protected desert vegetation in the filming area; the Namibia Film Commission, which had visited the set, disputed the accusation. The finished film won six Academy Awards in 2016. One correction is worth carrying: the Fury Road landscape is this coastal Namib of grey gravel and low dunes, not the red dunes of Sossusvlei some 350 kilometres to the south, which are constantly and wrongly credited with it. MTV brought The Challenge: War of the Worlds here in 2019 for the same terrain. What you actually see today. The rebuilt jetty runs out over grey Atlantic swell with a restaurant at its end; the Mole and Palm Beach hold the town's sheltered swimming, such as it is at 14 °C. The main avenue keeps its colonial frontages and its bakeries and butchers; the Swakopmund Museum sits beside the lighthouse, and the Kristall Galerie displays one of the largest quartz clusters ever recovered. Beyond town, the standard excursions are genuinely good: the "moon landscape" of eroded Swakop valley badlands, the welwitschia drive to plants a thousand years old, Sandwich Harbour by 4x4 where the dunes fall straight into the lagoon, the flamingo flats and the Pelican Point seal colony at Walvis Bay, and Dune 7 for the classic sand climb. Quad biking, sandboarding, skydiving over the dunes and kayaking with seals all operate from here, which is why Swakopmund is Namibia's adventure-sports capital as much as its beach resort. The most rewarding half-day is the least dramatic: a guided walk on the dune belt south of the river, tracking sidewinding adders, Namaqua chameleons, web-footed geckos and the beetles that harvest fog on their backs — the small ecology that makes this fog desert unlike any other. Getting there and timing. The B2 from Windhoek is a straightforward four-hour drive of about 350 kilometres; Walvis Bay airport is 40 kilometres south with regional flights. December and January are Namibian holiday months when the town fills and prices rise; October to April is warmest, though "warm" here means low twenties. Fog is normal until late morning and burns off inland long before it clears the coast. Nights are cold year-round, and a windproof layer is more useful than swimwear.
via Wikimedia CommonsChapter IV · Hardap Region · 5 places
Hardap Region
Sossusvlei is a clay pan surrounded by the towering star dunes of the Namib-Naukluft National Park, where some of the highest dunes on earth rise above 300 metres. The classic photographic composition from the ridge of Dune 45, shot at sunrise when warm light rakes across the red sand faces, has become emblematic of the Namib Desert. The adjacent Deadvlei pan preserves skeletal camel-thorn trees set against white clay and deep blue sky.
✦ April to October · $$$
Regions of Namibia
Every place in Namibia
