Land of Contrasts

By Martin Webb-Bowen, owner of Ultimate Safaris

Namibia is rightly known as a 'land of contrasts' and it is these contrasts that make it so unique.  You can be enjoying the stunning desert scenery near Wolwedans on the Namib Rand Nature Reserve in the morning and then be casting for tiger fish on the Zambezi near Impalila Island in the late afternoon.  In the same way, you can have a stylish contemporary lunch in a Windhoek restaurant and then a very different sort of dinner round a camp fire with a Bushman family in the Kalahari on the same day.  The scenery is truly amazing and often has to be seen to be believed, but many potential visitors forget the other main draw of Namibia is the people and the wildlife.

The fifteen different cultural and language groups of Namibia are almost uniformly friendly and welcoming.  They are proud of their country, one of the most recently independant in Africa. When someone asks how you are when they greet you, they seem genuinely interested to hear the answer. Namibia has a population of two million people - spread out over an area four times the size of the UK so the animals also enjoy more space in which to roam than in many other countries where ranges are constantly encroached by the expansion of human habitation.  In fact, the 'desert elephant' and the 'desert lion' populations have increased rapidly as a result of the low human population of Damara and Ova Himba speaking peoples between the Etosha National Park and the Skeleton Coast.  Animals are able to move freely through this huge range which has recently been declared a protected area for wildlife. For the first time in fifteen years there is evidence of these magnificent 'desert lions' having made it all the way back to the Skeleton Coast - where they were often seen in the 'old days'.

My own great satisfaction after fifteen years of running exclsuive private guided safaris into some of the most remote and fascinating areas of the country, apart from still being able to see many of these incredible sights for myself, is to talk to guests when they have just returned from their safari and before they head off to the airport on their way back home.  With eyes bright with enthusiasm, they describe seeing 'desert elephant' delicately picking seed pods from acacia trees in the ephemeral river beds in the west. Catching sight of leopards creeping through the the bush of Etosha or slinking amongst the rocks in the mountains. Seeing a pride of lion hunting on the Hobatere Concession area. Watching the sun rise over the magnificent dunescapes near Wolwedans, being able to see more stars than they ever new existed in cloudless skies with no ambient light, or just spending an evening sipping whisky beside a camp fire in the absolute knowledge that there is no one else within sight or sound.

Namibia has something for everyone, and almost everyone leaves their safari with us saying that it was genuinely 'the holiday of a lifetime'.  What could be more fulfilling than that?

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