Travel in Namibia: long drives between parks in different climates

How visitors arrive and get around

Most visitors who fly in land at Hosea Kutako International Airport near Windhoek, which the Wikipedia article on tourism calls the main point of entry. Walvis Bay has its own international airport on the coast. From Windhoek the Namib is a long drive: the centre of the desert lies about 480 kilometres to the south-west, by the Wikipedia figure, and Swakopmund and Walvis Bay lie at its northern end.

Traffic drives on the left. Inside the Namib-Naukluft Park most routes are gravel or dust, apart from the 60 kilometres of concrete from the Sesriem gate to Sossusvlei. Britannica describes the country's transport infrastructure as reasonably good, with the main roads through the Caprivi Strip and towards Botswana upgraded, and the Wikipedia article on the economy records two new highways, the Trans-Caprivi and the Trans-Kalahari, under construction. Long-distance road corridors connect Walvis Bay with the interior of the region. The railways are run by the state-owned TransNamib.

What Windhoek is used for

Windhoek is the base most itineraries start from. The Namibia Tourism Exit Survey, produced for the Directorate of Tourism, found that 56% of all visitors in 2012 and 2013 spent time in the capital, and the bodies that run tourism, among them Namibia Wildlife Resorts, the Namibia Tourism Board and the Hospitality Association of Namibia, have their headquarters there. The Wikipedia article on tourism lists the Tintenpalast, where both houses of Parliament sit, and the Zoo Park among the sights.

What the border asks for

Entry rules are set by the Namibian authorities and change; the British government's travel advice gives the form they took for British citizens when it was read for this article. From 1 April 2025 British visitors need a visa, which can be obtained on arrival at a port of entry or as an e-visa before travel. The passport has to be valid for at least six months after arrival and have at least three blank pages. Parents travelling with children aged 17 and under must carry full birth certificates showing both parents, and an affidavit of consent is needed where one parent travels alone. A certificate of yellow fever vaccination is required from travellers arriving from a country where the disease is a risk. The entry stamp is checked on departure, and an overstay or a missing stamp can lead to detention or a fine.

When the seasons favour each region

The country lies across the Tropic of Capricorn and its rain comes in summer: a short rainy season from September to November and the main one from February to April, with a dry winter from June to August. More than 300 days a year are sunny, by the Wikipedia count, and humidity is low. The amount varies sharply by region, from about 600 millimetres a year in the Caprivi Strip to 50 millimetres or less on the coast. It also varies widely from year to year, and multi-year droughts are common; the government declared a drought emergency in May 2019. The World Bank's climate portal gives a national average of 21.29 °C and 361.36 millimetres of rain a year over 1995 to 2014.

Each region has its own climate. The coast is cool and often foggy, shaped by the Benguela Current; the Wikipedia article on the Namib records coastal temperatures between 9 and 20 °C through the year and more than 180 days of thick fog in some coastal areas. Inland the days and nights differ widely. On the plateau summer days can reach 40 °C and frost is common in winter, and Britannica gives Windhoek an average of 13 °C in July and 24 °C in December. In the desert interior, summer days can pass 45 °C and nights can freeze.

The seasons decide what can be seen at Etosha. For most of the year the pan is dry and saline; in the wet season it becomes a shallow lake of more than 6,000 square kilometres. As the dry season draws on, the animals of the surrounding savanna concentrate at the waterholes around its edge. In the north the annual efundja floods fill the oshanas from rain falling in Angola, and the floods of March 2011 displaced 21,000 people.

Where the dunes and the coast are visited

The Namib Sand Sea is the reason many people come. UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage property in 2013, covering 3,077,700 hectares inside the Namib-Naukluft Park, as the only coastal desert with extensive dune fields influenced by fog. At Sossusvlei several dunes exceed 300 metres and surround white salt pans, and Sesriem, near the gate, is one of the few settlements in the desert that is lived in all year.

What Walvis Bay and Swakopmund offer

Walvis Bay is the main port, set between the desert and a large lagoon with numerous sea mammals and birds. The Wikipedia article on tourism lists angling from the shore and from boats, boat cruises, sea kayaking and kite and windsurfing on the water, with an international leg of the speed kite and windsurfing competitions held there each year. On land there are tours to Sandwich Harbour, four-wheel-drive trips into the dunes south of the Kuiseb, dune boarding and guided quad-bike trips into the Kuiseb delta, where visitors can meet the Topnaar people, described in the tourism article as descendants of the Khoikhoi. The desert behind the town is sold to visitors as the Living Desert, for the number of small species that live in it, and tours go out to look for them.

Swakopmund was founded in 1892 as the main harbour of German South West Africa and keeps its German colonial architecture. It is a beach resort known for extreme sports, with dunes near Langstrand, south of the Swakop River, among its attractions; its skydiving club has flown from the town's airport since 1974. Outside the town stands the Martin Luther, a steam locomotive from 1896 abandoned in the desert.

The desert is not empty of large animals. The Wikipedia article on the Namib lists gemsbok, springbok and ostriches across it, with desert elephants and lions in some areas, and welwitschia plants, which live on fog and grow two leaves for their whole lives, are common on the Welwitschia Plains near the Husab uranium mine. In winter a hot wind from the interior, the Bergwind or Oosweer, can blow down to the coast and raise sandstorms.

The Skeleton Coast lies further north. The Wikipedia article on the Namib counts more than a thousand wrecks along that coast, and lions there prey on the seals and shorebirds that the cold, fish-rich water supports.

What Etosha and the north hold

Britannica describes the Etosha Pan as a major game area and tourist attraction, and the Wikipedia article on tourism names the national park around it, with the Fish River Canyon, Sossusvlei and the Namib-Naukluft park, as the country's main attractions. Beyond it the north changes character. The Kaokoveld in the north-west is regularly visited by desert elephants, and the Himba of the region still wear traditional dress. The rock art sites lie in the Erongo Region, in former Damaraland: Twyfelfontein, Namibia's first World Heritage site, inscribed in 2007 for its rock engravings, and the Brandberg, with painting sites across about 750 square kilometres and the panel called the White Lady. UNESCO's description of Twyfelfontein lists engravings of rhinoceros, elephant, ostrich and giraffe and of human and animal footprints, with six rock shelters painted with human figures in red ochre, a record of hunter-gatherer ritual over at least 2,000 years. The Brandberg paintings are mostly the work of San hunter-gatherers and some may be 2,000 years old or more, by the Wikipedia article on culture.

The north-east is wetter. The Bushveld along the Angolan border and in the Caprivi Strip takes about 400 millimetres of rain a year, and several of the permanent border rivers run along it. The Caprivi Arts Festival is held there. The country's other national parks, by the Wikipedia list, are Waterberg Plateau, Bwabwata, Dorob, Khaudum, Mudumu, Mangetti and Nkasa Rupara.

How the south is reached

The south is quieter. The Fish River Canyon cuts into the plateau there, and the Fish River, 650 kilometres long by the Wikipedia count, runs seasonally to the Orange. |Ai-|Ais and the Fish River Canyon Park joined South Africa's Richtersveld in 2003 to form the |Ai-|Ais/Richtersveld Transfrontier Park, with the hot springs at |Ai-|Ais inside it. Further west lies the former Sperrgebiet, where access was restricted because of the diamonds mined around the mouth of the Orange; it is now the Tsau ǁKhaeb National Park. The port at Lüderitz is to be expanded.

Snow is almost unknown in Namibia: the last fall the Wikipedia article on the country's geography records was at the Spreetshoogte Pass in the Namib-Naukluft Park in June 2011.

The southern desert has drawn endurance events. In 2009 the RacingThePlanet ultramarathon ran 250 kilometres in seven days and six stages through the Fish River Canyon, across the Namib and along the coast to Lüderitz; 213 runners from 38 countries started and 167 finished.

Who visits and how it is counted

Visitor numbers have grown since the first estimate in 1989, which put non-domestic tourists at 100,000 a year. By 2014 the count was 1,176,000. The Wikipedia article on tourism reports that about one visitor in three comes from South Africa, followed by Germany, with the United Kingdom, Italy and France behind them.

The figures for 2008 are the World Travel and Tourism Council's, cited in the Wikipedia articles.

Tourism is regulated and marketed by the Namibia Tourism Board, set up by the Namibia Tourism Board Act of 2000. Some 50 communal conservancies, covering 11.8 million hectares by the Wikipedia count, earn income from wildlife and lodges on land held by rural communities, and the arrangement is credited with better land management. Sport hunting is part of the same economy; it was 14% of tourism in 2000, worth $19.6 million. The pandemic cut tourism by almost 90%, and the recovery to 79% of the earlier level by 2024 is the most recent figure the sources give.

The sports sold to visitors are mostly about sand and air. Sandboarding, skydiving and four-wheel driving have spread to many towns, the Wikipedia article on the economy notes, and the dry climate has made the country a setting for desert runs and ultra-triathlons.

Visitors meet the country's own calendar too. Independence Day falls on 21 March, and May brings a run of public holidays, Workers' Day, Cassinga Day, Ascension Day, Africa Day and Genocide Remembrance Day; Namibian.org noted in 2025 that offices and most shops closed for the whole week around 28 May, when three of them fell close together. What Namibians speak and eat is described in Namibia: culture, and the land the routes cross in Namibia: geography.