A trip to Namibia had been in our heads for a few years, as the scenery looked amazing – massive dunes, wild coastline, lots of animals. Timing was important, as we wanted to go during their winter / dry season, with May and June being good points in the ‘shoulder season’ before the high season of July and August. We had even started working on an itinerary for spring 2017 before we were seduced by Scotland… we finally got our act together in June 2018 and booked a two-week award miles trip on Qatar Airways for travel in May 2019. As a side bonus, our long layover in Qatar left enough time to leave the airport and explore Doha, and on the return we had an overnight layover in Chicago.
With our flights in hand we started working on the details of where to go, and when. Our two main objectives were Sossusvlei, dunes in the south, and Etosha, the national park in the north. From those anchor points we put together an itinerary that had us start south with the desert, then to the coast where we would take a weekend side-trip to see family in Cape Town, South Africa (after 12 years!), then return to Namibia and continue north for animal viewing, before ending in the capital, Windhoek.
Altogether our route looked like this:
Some key points:
- The roads marked in red are dirt/gravel, so it took longer to drive on those sections. Some were very rough, others were relatively smooth.
- Altogether we drove nearly 3000km, almost 1800 miles!
- Namibia is big and relatively unpopulated, so there were times when we didn’t see another car for 30 minutes or more.
- Thankfully all the gas stations we visited took credit cards.
Our trip to Namibia was challenging, distinct, amazing, and very memorable. We definitely hope to return in the future.
We have a bunch of posts chock full of photos coming up but if you can’t wait, here’s our Flickr photo album from the trip! :)