Namibia holidays

Holiday highlights

Wedged between the Kalahari and the chilly South Atlantic, Namibia's charms are well known in neighbouring South Africa, but outsiders have only recently discovered its deserts, seascapes and bushwalking. Blessed with rich natural resources, a solid modern infrastructure and diverse traditional cultures, Namibia is a beautiful country of vast potential.

Namibia offers the safari savvy a fresh safari destination, with the seemingly never-ending expanse of the Namib desert, the vast Etosha salt pan, the eerily beautiful Skeleton Coast  and the towering sand dunes of Sossusvlei.

One of the oldest conservation sites in Africa, Etosha sustains a huge variety of mammals and birdlife including the endangered black rhino and  rare gemsbok. Dominated by the extensive Etosha salt pan, predators and plains game here are attracted to the waterholes, creating particularly  prolific wildlife viewing during the dry season (June to November).

A landscape of rugged mountains, vast desert, magnificent burnt orange  sand dunes, river canyons and clay pans, it is perhaps surprising that Namib-Naukluft sustains any life at all – and yet hyena, gemsbok, jackal and unique plantlife all survive in this hyper-arid region. See the  spectacular Dead Vlei: a forest frozen in time, and a dawn visit to the  world’s highest sand dunes at Sossuvelei is a magical experience.

The Kalahari Desert stretches across a section of Southern Africa and covers parts of Namibia, South Africa and Botswana. The section that  crosses into Namibia includes part of the Succulent Karoo which is home to approximately 5,000 species of plant including many of which are endemic. Namibia is also known for its scattering of inselbergs  (isolated mountains) which provide flourishing microclimates above the desert floor.