Over my years in London, I’ve met many South African people (and even dated one) and ninety percent of them would rave above their country (the other ten percent were really relieved to be out of there!). In particular, Cape Town has been portrayed to me as the best place on the planet (Hi Tina!) […]

Namibia definitely has some amazing scenery, novel adventure sports and touring the country in a 4×4 with roof tents has been a dream of mine ever since I saw it was possible at a travel show in London. I certainly had a lot of fun moments on our 12 day tour, but sadly I can’t […]

After self-driving Etosha National Park, we returned to Windhoek and waved goodbye to our Nambian 4×4 camping car and boarded the Intercape coach to embark upon the twenty hour journey to Cape Town, South Africa. This was hardly the hard travel to which we had become accustomed in Africa. The Intercape Sleepliner is the biggest, […]

A self-drive safari in Etosha National Park in northern Namibia demonstrated to us how demanding being a professional safari driver/guide must be and, whilst we love our 4×4 camping car, the value of riding in a customised safari vehicle with raising roof for the panoramic experience. Aside from lions, which we only spotted from great […]

Namibia is the size of France, yet has a population of only two million. That’s two people to every square kilometre and most cluster in the capital, Windhoek. Which means there are going to be large areas of the country that is uninhabited and in fact uninhabitable. Meet the Skeleton Coast region, where for hours […]

We had been recommended a stay at Spitzkuppe, a collection of imposing rock formations puncturing the otherwise flat (completely flat) Namibian landscape. We had a lot of fun climbing the boulders and taking photographs of the odd shapes that nature had created. After which, we set about finding a camping pitch to give us a […]

Ever since arriving in Namibia I’ve seen people proudly sporting their “Sandboarding, Swakopmund” t-shirts, so I thought that we should give it a go. After our disappointing windless land-yachting experience, I was pretty confident that we’d have more luck falling down a dune on a stretched tea-tray. Chatting to past participants it appeared that the […]

Being a lover of watersports, and sailing in particular, I’ve been intrigued for a while to branch out and experience land yachting. And what better place to try it than in Namibia, the oldest desert in the world. Take one French man, a huge flat desert, four land yachts and some willing participants and you […]

We’ve been in sub-Saharan Africa for nearly three months now and have never been out at night later than about 9 o’clock. In fact, we’ve only been out later than sunset (between 5:30-7:30pm at this time of year, depending on country/timezone) once or twice. Swakopmund is a really nice seaside town. Our guidebook describes it […]

As we arrived in Swakopmund we stopped at the first hostel/camp site that we came across, called Dunes Sky Lodge. It was my turn to run to reception to check facilities and prices. As I approached the counter, a rather sullen looking lady asked me if I wanted to camp here. I replied that, yes […]