Welcome to Namibia, home of nature.
Namibia is the land of shifting sand dunes and moving deserts. of colossal red rocks and mountains that go from the savannah to the sky. Some keep spraying salty sea over the seal-peppered bays of the Skeleton Coast.
It’s the landscapes and the backcountry that have brought the country to the forefront of adventure tourism on the continent. Since the fall of apartheid, the country has been a picture of political stability. Come to Namibia with the sandboard waxed, the walking boots primed and the prejudices well and truly abandoned. You’re sure to leave awed by its wondrous beauty.
Mrpocu.xyz says let’s explore the best places to visit in Namibia. And these are the 15 best places you have to see in Namibia.
1. Etosha National Park
If you can only stop by one of Namibia’s national parks, make it this one. Etosha has been famed for its wealth of rare animal life for more than 100 years. It was first proclaimed a game reserve way back in 1907! Today, the region encompasses dry and cracked salt pans. The labyrinthine valleys of the “Leopard Hills” is the safari kingpin of the country. Come spy out the African bush elephants and plains zebras at the watering holes. If lucky you can get a glimpse of the uber-rare black rhino or witness the springing springbok. Etosha is indeed a national favourite.
2. Sossusvlei
The salt pan known as Sossusvlei is set deep in the territories of the Namib-Naukluft National Park. This is where the scorching African sun beats down and sidewinder snakes drift over the undulations of sand. No wonder it is referred to as the Namibia of travel brochures. Beset by some of the highest, huge, hulking dunes it’s a place that rarely fails to take the breath away. These great sculpted sections of the desert shift in the winds. Some parts like the colossal mound of Dune 7 clock up whopping heights of over 350 meters above sea level. 4X4 tours are the most popular way to see the sights. Visitors can expect to spy out of antelope, oryx, springbok and ostrich as they delve into the wilds.
3. Kaokoland
There are few places in all of Africa like the carved lands of Kaokoland. If you are looking for a remote and untouched area, here you are. The land is bisected by winding river ways that meander like desert snakes. This continues through the rock-ribbed mountains and the great Grand Canyon-mimicking escarpments of the north. Today though, it’s slowly becoming more open to tourists, who flock in after safaris in nearby Etosha. They mainly come to encounter the Himba folk, who’ve scraped a living from the wilderness here as nomads for centuries. Kaokoland is also the home to the fascinating mountain elephant; specially adapted for life with little water.
4. Swakopmund
Between the Saxon half-timbered facades that line the exterior of the Altes Gefängnis jail, the ochre-hued Woermannhaus and the other clutch of indelibly European architecture that peppers the downtown of this beachside resort on the Atlantic coast of Namibia, it’s easy to see and feel the German influence. And it doesn’t end there, because beer halls and hops-scented pubs all spill onto the wide sands of the Swakopmund beach (one fringed with a lovely, lively promenade), and there are even dubious Nazi trinkets and lederhosen aike still available in the craft markets. Weird.
If interested in staying in hostels here is an article you may love on How To Make Friends In a hostel
5. Skeleton Coast Park
There are few landscapes that define the wilds of Namibia as well as the Skeleton Coast Park. This great stretch of endless sand dunes and crashing Atlantic waves run for no less than 500 kilometres from top to bottom. It’s delineated by the spot where the arid deserts of the inland meet the ocean and famed as one of the most dangerous sections of shoreline in the world. There are countless rusting carcasses of old tankers and skiffs, fishing boats and convoy ships to testify to this. Tales of perished sailors still abound too, making this very much the domain of the wandering Namid elephant and the stalking hyena – not humans.
6. Windhoek
Windhoek is an interesting little place that is something of a capsule of Namibia as a whole. Sat virtually smack bang in the heart of the country, the city started life as a small pastoral settlement, known for its babbling freshwater spring. Today, that water table keeps the interior of the town – from palm-dotted Zoo Park to manicured Parliament Garden – nice and green. There are Bavarian-style towers belying the old German influence too, along with a series of typically Swabian beer bars that make for surprisingly good nightlife. Then there’s the rougher side, where the trials of Namibian life come into focus: Katutura, the endless barrio; Okuryangava and its tin-shack homes.
7. Twyfelfontein
Twyfelfontein isn’t known for its fascinating wealth of wildlife, or for any buzzing metropolitan character – in fact, it isn’t really even a town at all. Instead, this spot in the midst of the dusty Kunene Region in the very heart of northern Namibia is famed as the home of some of Africa’s most prolific displays of ancient rock art. Tagged – unsurprisingly – by UNESCO back in 2007, it’s thought that the spot has been inhabited for as many as six millennia. It’s spread over a series of more than 16 individual sites, each exhibiting its own curious anthropomorphic petroglyphs. What’s more, the area itself rarely fails to take the breath away; what with its patchwork of soaring table mountains and rolling savannah plains.
8. Namib-Naukluft National Park
Already mentioned on this list as the area containing the iconic dunes and salt flats of Sossusvlei, the seemingly endless sea of sand that is the Namib-Naukluft National Park is certainly worth a second mention on account of the wealth of other bucket-list-busting must-sees that exist between its boundaries. Take Deadvlei; a cracked and withered landscape of sun-scorched acacia trees (some thought to be as much as 700 years old!) and mudflats. And then, closer to the beaches and the town of Swakopmund, the landscapes become truly otherworldly, as the parched plains rise to ridgebacks that resemble the maned spine of a stalking hyena!
9. Spitzkoppe
The Spitzkoppe is one of the most captivating sights of Damaraland and of Namibia’s backcountry as a whole. When it was encountered for the first time by German troops back in the early 1900s, comparisons were immediately drawn with the chiselled summits of Switzerland’s Matterhorn. It’s clear to see why, with that twisted and contorted mass of granite stone soaring more than 1,700 meters above the rolling desert plains. Ancient rock paintings also crowd around the base of the mountain, there’s a great campsite here, and oodles of carved rock formations – arches, caves, bridges – to wonder at.
10. Caprivi
Caprivi, or more appropriately the Caprivi Strip, is a long, thin needle of land that pokes its way into the heart of west southern Africa from the northern reaches of Namibia. Almost half the length of Namibia proper, it’s home to habitats and climatic zones simply not found elsewhere in the country, and plays an important role as a connecting bridge for rare wildlife migrating inland and towards the coast; creatures like the Namibian elephant and the African wild dog. After a civil war in the 1990s, the area is now returning to focus on its unique flora and fauna, which includes zebras in the Mahango Game Reserve, blue wildebeest in Bwabwata, and verdant savannah in Salambala Conservancy.
11. Kolmanskop
The famed ghost town of Namibia is an eerie and haunting place. Since the whole place was abandoned in the middle of the 20th century, the homes have slowly crumbled and the various municipal buildings have dilapidated. It was not always the case: Kolmanskop was once one of the richest towns in the country; famed for its diamond boom – they say the sparkling jewels were just lying on the ground here in the 1900s! At its height, the spot had its very own school, fire station and ice factory. Today, though, hundreds of tourists visit its empty shell a year, who come to see the abandoned way of life and snap photos of the spooky emptiness.
12. Walvis Bay
Thanks to its tactical position on the Atlantic coast, with access to one of the finest deepwater harbours on this side of the Cape of Good Hope, Walvis Bay has been a plaything for the historic superpowers in the African theatre of war. The Portuguese passed this way, then the Brits, then came the Germans in the First World War, each raising evermore elaborate dock structures and depots. Now, with the colonial conflicts long in the past, the city is one of the top tourists draws in all of Namibia. It’s got kitesurfing along its beaches, oodles of fishing opportunities, tour organizers touting excursions to the bird-rich islands out at sea, and sand boarding on the dunes of the Namib Desert.
13. Penguin Islands
Following neatly on from Walvis Bay, this smattering of rocks and tiny islets that poke above the Atlantic close to the spot of coast where the erstwhile German harbour town can be found is another top draw for travellers in the region. As the name suggests, they are occasionally dotted with colonies of the country’s trademark Jackass Penguin (an unfortunate name, we know!). However, those flat-footed waddlers aren’t the only draw. There are breathtaking headlands and cliffs to see, along with a whole host of other unusual avian and sea life.
14. Fish River Canyon
The Fish River Canyon winds and weaves between the great mountains of southern Africa in a truly majestic fashion. Red-hued rocks tower atop the valley bottom, pits of deep sand and colossal boulders spot the landscape, and the sunsets glow blood-red against the rugged ranges known as the Three Sisters. The hiking path that runs the length of this great wonder can hardly be resisted for intrepid travellers. It crosses high passes and arduous tracts of dusty lands, covering a mega 88 kilometres from start to finish.
15. Hentiesbaai
The gateway to the National West Coast Recreation Area is one of Namibia’s most popular high-season tourist draws for domestic travellers. Oodles of folk leave behind the city streets of Windhoek and head to the wind-blasted shoreline here. They come to ride rumbling 4X4s over the undulating desert dunes, to break out into the inhospitable wildernesses of the Skeleton Coast, and to see the thousands of seals that pepper the beach banks to the north of town. The town is also known for its diversity of marine life, which draws anglers and boaters to boot.
Here are top 15 best places you need to see in Namibia. Have you been anywhere in the above? How was your experience? What was your favorite site?