Ultimate Namibia Safari

Depart Windhoek with your private guide and drive southwest through the Khomas Hochland highlands before descending the Great Escarpment into the Namib Desert below. Enjoy a picnic lunch en route to Sesriem Canyon, a narrow gorge and vital source of water for early settlers. Overnight at Dead Valley Lodge, where you can relax in the picturesque bar by the swimming pool while looking out over the local desert scenery towards Elim Dune.

Wake pre-dawn and set off to Namib Naukluft National Park before sunrise to capture the dunes whilst the light is soft and shadows accentuate their towering shapes and curves. This area boasts some of the highest free-standing sand dunes in the world and your guide will give you an insight on the formation of the Namib Desert and its myriad of fascinating creatures and plants that have adapted to survive these harsh environs. Once you have explored Sossusvlei, Deadvlei (famous for its gnarled and ghostly camel thorn trees) and the surrounding dune fields you will enjoy a picnic brunch in the shade of a camel thorn tree.

Travel northwest through awesome and ever-changing desert landscapes of the Namib Naukluft National Park, including the impressive Gaub and Kuiseb canyons. You will meet the coast at the port town of Walvis Bay and then continue north to Swakopmund, where you can enjoy the pleasant seaside location and cooler coastal air for your next two nights. There will be time this afternoon to explore the town and wander along the waterfront on foot, before heading off for dinner at a popular restaurant that specializes in locally harvested seafood.

After meeting your kayaking guide, head out into the South Atlantic, kept cool by the Benguela current. Kayaking is an ideal way of seeing Cape fur seals, bottlenose dolphins, pelicans, flamingos and a wide variety of other sea birds. If you are lucky, there is also a chance of seeing whales, leatherback turtles, and sunfish. Alternatively, opt for a motorized catamaran excursion within the outer lagoon and harbor to search for marine wildlife. After a picnic lunch, the afternoon is yours to explore the Walvis Bay waterfront or shop the craft market in Swakopmund.

Leave the moist coastal air behind as you head inland to Damaraland. The landscape is typified by displays of color, magnificent table-topped mountains, rock formations, and bizarre-looking vegetation like the ancient welwitschia plant. Strewn over a hillside amongst flat-topped mountains of red sandstone, Twyfelfontein’s boulders and slabs of red sandstone hold some 2,500 prehistoric engravings that depict wildlife, people, and abstract motifs. It is perhaps the largest and finest collection of petroglyphs in Africa. The engravings show animals such as elephant, giraffe, kudu, lion, rhinoceros, springbok, zebra, and ostrich that once used to drink from a fountain at the bottom of the hill. Continue on to your camp for the next two nights, where you’ll toast the setting sun from an amazing viewpoint.

Today is all about desert-adapted wildlife, and especially elephants. A 4×4 drive along the ephemeral Aba Huab and Huab River puts you in the best position to search for these amazing creatures, who travel farther than any other elephant in Africa in search of water and food. Your guide will explain just how these amazing animals can survive in such hyper-arid conditions. It’s also possible to see giraffe and even rhino if you’re lucky.

A morning drive northward puts you at camp in time for an afternoon game drive on the Ongava Reserve on the southwestern edge of Etosha National Park. Keep a keen eye out for rhino, eland, oryx, cheetah, sable, mountain zebra, and leopard.

Spend a full-day out on safari in the massive Etosha National Park. The Etosha Pan lies in the Owambo Basin, on the north-western edge of the Namibian Kalahari Desert. Until three million years ago it formed part of huge, shallow lake that was reduced to a complex of salt pans when the major river that fed it, the Kunene, changed course and began to flow to the Atlantic instead. If the lake existed today, it would be the third-largest in the world. Etosha boasts some 114 mammals and over 340 bird species including elephant, lion, giraffe, blue wildebeest, eland, kudu, oryx, zebra, rhino, cheetah, leopard, hyena, honey badger, warthog, and the endemic black faced impala.

Depart this morning to Okonjima and the AfriCat Foundation’s Day Center. This wildlife sanctuary focuses on the research and rehabilitation of Africa’s big cats, especially injured or captured leopard and cheetah. Enjoy an exciting and informative game drive and tour of the center to learn about the foundation. The highlight is meeting some of the special rehabilitated carnivore ambassadors. For those who are interested, an extra night or two at AfriCat can be arranged – inquire for details. Continue to Windhoek in time to meet your departing international flight.