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Route
Namibia - with its good roads, numerous campsites and navigable cities - is made for overlanding. Whilst we were there we saw loads of overlanders from neighbouring countries or with hire vehicles and, suddenly, explaining that we had “a tent on the roof of our car and could we camp, please” wasn’t difficult. Information is easy to come by - in fact you may have trouble stopping the flow at times! If you’re spending some time here the Willie Oliver book of 4x4 routes is great (I browsed it just as we were about to leave).

Route
We came into the country from Zambia at Sesheke/Katima Mulilo and drove along the Caprivi Strip to Oshakati (for a failed attempt to get our Angolan visas). After this we skirted round the western end of Etosha (Opuwo—Sesfontein-Twyfelfontein) before transiting the Skeleton Coast Park to Swakopmund. From here we went via Spitzkoppe to Windhoek, visited Soussevlei and finally headed north to Etosha and then into Angola at the Oshikango/Santa Clara border. Due to the time of year (hot) and the fact we were eventually going north we didn’t get down to Fish River Canyon.

Border formalities
Katima Mulilo is small and quiet but as it is in the process of being re-built it’s currently housed in porta-cabins and is a little confusing. As Brits we could get up to 90-days free visa (I think this is true for most nationalities).

Note: we got a 35-day visa on the border and thought we might need to extend it in Windhoek. Although we could have got 90 days free at the border they wanted to charge us for the extension. We made a mental note to always ask for the maximum visa period allowed!

As with SA, third-party insurance is included in the fuel price. The only vehicle-related charge we needed to pay was a ‘cross-border fee’ of N$160 (about £12). At Katimo Mulilo the office for this is not at the border but a little down the road, next to the Total garage on the junction with the B8. This fee is payable even if you are just transiting the Caprivi Strip between Botswana and Zambia, as the angry Saffers in the office had just found out….

General driving conditions
Good, good and very good. There are not many tarred roads but we’ve never seen so many graders and road-workers and the lesser roads are gravel rather than dirt. The road numbering is based on road quality and is a reliable indicator (i.e. B-roads are tarred, C-roads are good untarred, D-roads are minor roads). Our 2007 Map Studio atlas was already out of date but there are loads of free or cheap tourist maps that are very useful, often showing petrol stations, ATMs and campsites as well. All the towns we went to, including Windhoek, had great road systems and relatively polite drivers!

• Caprivi Strip (B8). Despite the fact we were taking it easy with our new engine we drove from Katima Mulilo to Rundu in one day (6 hours) and Rundu to Tsumeb, via the C42, in another (5½ hours). We saw one pothole the first day and a cluster (shock!) coming into Grootfontein. The landscape up here is fairly monotonous scrub but bush-camping is possible
• Kaokveld. We accidently had quite a lot of fun up here by losing the C41 as we came across from Oshakati to Opuwo (they’ve made it a main road until Okahoa and then it’s still minor, whilst the road to Tsandi has been upgraded to the M123). We ended up on tracks past farms and through uninhabited bush somewhere north of the C41, asking directions and checking the compass as we went! Sandy and rocky in places but perfectly manageable. Although their claim that it is the last true wilderness area in Southern Africa may be a bit overstated if I went back up here I’d buy one of the dedicated maps that show the tracks as well as the roads and explore some more
• Skeleton Coast Park. Twyfelfontein to Mile 108 took us 4½ hours driving plus photo stops. There is a campsite up here in Dec & Jan but outside of this time the only place you can stay is an expensive lodge. You are allowed to transit the park in one day if you enter at one end and exit at the other before a certain time (5pm I think). We arrived at Springbokwater Gate, paid our N$170 (£13) and drove down to Mile 108 in the West Coast Recreational Park to camp. The roads are good – they say they are 4x4 but we saw a small Citi car driving the other way – so you could make it to Henties Bay in one day if you wanted to
• If you’re in a rush you could get to Sesriem from Windhoek in one day but there are some great passes and it’s worth just taking some drives. We particularly enjoyed Gamsberg and Spreetshoogte (very steep – with our weight we needed low-ratio on the tar!)
• Namib-Naukluft. We asked in Swakopmund about driving on the permit-only roads through the northern end of the park but ended up having to go straight to Windhoek. The permits are good value if you want to camp as the camping is cheap
• When visiting Soussevlei, the drive from the campsite at Sesriem to Soussevlei is easy tar so you can do it quite quickly at sunrise. There is some soft sand right at the end where you’ll need to let your tyres down and have a shovel handy!

Accommodation
The camping is not cheap in Namibia, in fact sometimes a room in a backpackers is the same/cheaper. This is especially true of the NWR sites where the prices went up 1st November 2007 and are now really quite extortionate (see below). Worth checking out is the NACAOBTA website (www.nacaobta.com.na) – a community-based tourism initiative – as they have campsites in great places. Bush-camping is a possibilty in more remote places.

• At the Zambian border we stayed at a new campsite on the Katima Mulilo-Bukalo road towards the Botswana border as we weren’t sure when the next campsite would be. It was expensive (£12) and the only choice as many campsites listed in the guide-books were closed. We saw at least one 4x4 campsite on the eastern edge of the park so it would have been worth pushing on
• Tsumeb campsite is very functional. Both backpackers in town offer camping but are not really suitable for rooftop tents
• Opuwo Country Hotel (N$150) has fantastic views and a good bar/pool you can use, even if it’s a bit of a trek from the campsite. There are slightly cheaper options in town too. I’m not particularly keen at gawping at tribes but Opuwo is an amazing town full of proud and very different people
• There is a cluster of campsites on the C39 near the turn-off for Twyfelfontein. These are the closest you will get to Springbokwater Gate for the Skeleton Coast Park. We stayed at Abu Huab Community Site which was dusty and windy (but I imagine they all are round here!). Eating not advised but the bar is good
• The NWR fishing campsite of Mile 108 is very basic (drop loo, no running water) and quite bleak but somehow fantastic! NWR say you need to pre-book in Windhoek but you shouldn’t need to unless it is the height of fishing season (Dec-Jan). Apparently there is a campsite in Henties Bay if you don’t fancy the elements
• In Swakopmund we camped at Alte Bruche. Expensive (N$200) and a bit soulless but they had those bizarre en-suite bathrooms with each site which was a real luxury!
• Spitzkoppe. One of our favourite campsites so far and quite unique. It’s a NACOBTA site and you arrive by the restaurant/craft shop and are shown a map of places you can camp in the basin made by the two koppies. The campsites feel very wild and isolated (even at the weekend when loads of locals turn up) and it’s good to stay two nights so that you can spend a day exploring by car or on foot. The facilities are basic, with water to buy and a sprinkling of drop loos around the site
• Sesriem. Well overpriced at N$600 but allows you to get an early start to Sousselvlei which is pretty essential for the light. There seemed to be accommodation springing up outside the gates however, so keep an eye out for other options as you drive in. We stayed in Solitaire Game Farm after visiting the dunes which was very peaceful and beautiful and had domesticated meerkats!
• Windhoek. We spent a lot of time here trying to sort out our Angolan visas and so camped at Cardboard Box (awkward with a rooftop tent but the bar is good fun), camped at Chameleon (good facilities and quieter but you are in the car-park), took a room at Chameleon (very nice and very good value). We also camped at Arrebusch next to Eros airport (you get a lot of space and room but it’s N$150 and we got some begging from the staff) and the Stopover (about 15km north along the B1)
• Etosha. Due to the price rises it does make sense to stay outside and day-visit. By Andersson gate there are several options; we stayed in the Etosha Safari Camp, which was the closest to the gate, had a good swimming pool and was only N$100, and there were a couple of lodges that claimed to offer camping just outside the east gate. However, we also stayed at Halali and Numutoni in the park and really enjoyed the floodlit waterhole at Halali (the Okaukejo one is supposed to be good too) as well as the naughty campsite honey-badger
• Nakambale (signed from Ondangwa) is in an old Finnish mission and has a great museum about the missionaries. This, or the community site in Ondangwa, was the closest place we found to the Oshikango border into Angola at about an hours drive away. Nakambale is friendly and peaceful.

NWR (Namibia Wildlife Resorts) I’ll try not to rant here, but really. After being continually told that we need to pre-book everything in Windhoek and Swakopmund and trying very hard to do this (think trying to get airtime and a signal on remote roads, or visiting the Swakop office three days in a row whilst their ‘systems are down’) every time we turned up at a campsite (Etosha, Mile 108, even Sesriem) it was half empty and the staff didn’t look at our reservation number. When we went into the Windhoek office to book Sesriem the girl asked us to come back in half an hour as she couldn’t get through to the campsite, when I went back she wasn’t there, then eventually she came back, got through on the phone and promptly passed it to me! And despite these numerous opportunities she still failed to tell me that the prices had gone up the week before and it would now cost us N$600 (£45!!) for one site/two people instead of the £10 we were expecting. So my advice: book well in advance on the internet or just turn up (unless you’re there for the Dec/Jan school holidays).


Despite this the parks are great. Etosha was quite different to other parks we have been to as it is all based around waterholes, which means you see a lot of species in one place. We also saw lions twice and African wild-cats! We thought the Skeleton Coast Park was well worth the permit fee as the landscape is very different to the West Coast Recreational Area, which is actually quite dull although the seals are worth a detour.

Food, water and beer
Inevitably, water shortages are fairly common on the rural campsites and many of them charge for water as they have to truck it in (e.g. Spitzkoppe, Mile 108) so pick it up when you can.

Supermarkets are in all towns and small grocery stores (for tinned stuff) in most villages. The store attached to the hotel in Solitaire is a lifesaver for fresh stuff and good bread.

Eating out in Windhoek is good and OK priced. Lunch at Café Schneiders is a bit of an institution (meat-and-two-veg type meals done really well) and Chris had the ‘best apple crumble ever’ at the Namcrafts café (I was offended).

Draught Windhoek is hard to come by but draught Hansa is good. We paid as little as N$6 for a large draught in Windhoek but as much as N$16 in remote resorts. Even when they don’t have running water, campsites invariably have cold beer!

Money and fuel
ATMs are in all towns, many South African. I used Nedbank, Stanbic, FNB and also Windhoek. South African Rand is as readily accepted as Namibian Dollars – it’s pegged at 1:1.

Note: If you’re going into Angola, in the south of the country Nambian Dollars are as easily and economically changed to Angolan Kwanza as US Dollars.

Fuel cost between N$6.7-6.95/litre (51-54p). There are fuel stations in all small towns. The only place we vaguely worried about running out of fuel was in the northwest and here we saw fuel stations in Opuwo, Sesfontein, Twyfelfontein (at the lodge), Solitaire and Sesriem.

We spent about £45 per day as a couple, with a big chunk of our costs coming from the fact we spent a lot of time in Windhoek sorting out our Angolan visas.

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