Keir and Robyn

Namibia!

[June 2019] Namibia has been on our shortlist for a long time.  Until now, we’ve been deterred by the time and expense of getting there and finding enough time to do it justice once we are there.  This summer, we found 23 days to visit and had a great time.  It’s a beautiful country with tons to do and it’s cheap, easy and safe to boot – a no brainer!

Contrary to our normal traveling habits, we organized a set trip through ‘The Cardboard Box’, which I highly recommend.  They organized a Hilux with all the camping gear, negotiated an itinerary with us and made hotel/camping reservations for us.  It worked out to about $150 a day for the car, camping equipment and accommodation, which I think is an incredible deal!

There was so much to do in Namibia that almost every day we had an experience that we would have considered a ‘highlight of the trip’ on any other trip.

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Travel Notes

• People in Southern Africa have the camping gear down. They have tons of rugged, effective and cheap camping gear.  ‘Bushwhackers’ in Windhoek and Swakopmund is a great place to buy gear.  We bought great folding sleeping mattresses and camping chairs (I highly recommend Frontrunner folding directors chairs.)
• I highly recommend ‘The Cardboard Box’ (namibian.org), especially ‘Lilly’ (lilly@namibian.org). They organized a great trip for a very reasonable cost.  They took care of small details like providing a SIM in your welcome pack and quickly solved any small problems that we had.
• Water can be bought in bulk from many Spar Supermarkets (you fill your own containers with a tap), or using campground potable water.  Save a lot of plastic.
• The car rental companies give you a lot of camping equipment, a lot of which is not necessary. Consider leaving some of it with them – we found jerry cans for fuel and water totally unnecessary, and didn’t need some of the larger cooking equipment such as the Potjie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potjiekos) or Brie equipment (we are vegetarians).