Namibia 4x4 driving trips

Forget potholed, muddy tracks; ribbons of dead-straight, smooth tarmac criss-cross namibia, linking its most spectacular destinations. If you stay inside the park, you can beat the park entry lines in the morning and maximize valuable sleep time, and can also view game at the lodge waterholes at night. With no accommodation within the park itself, mahango is geared towards day trips, but there are several excellent hotels strung along the banks of the kavango just a few kilometers from the entrance.

Etosha national park is the most renowned wildlife area of namibia with a salt pan so large it can apparently be seen from space. In this article, we look at five of southern africa's most exciting self-drive safari destinations. Although the camelthorn is a 10 day self drive safari aimed at the budget end of the market, it still manages to self-drive safari namibia a decent variety of accommodation in a selection of namibia's major tourist attractions.

Today you leave the etosha region and travel south-west to the erongo area. Today you continue to another spectacular must-see in namibia, to the etosha national park. We spent our days exploring etosha on self-drives, focusing on the central, south and west areas. While you can easily self-drive sossusvlei, we took the lodge's excellent guided tour to have a break from driving.

That is, drive between windhoek, central highlands, etosha national park, damaraland, swakopmund and sossusvlei, and then back to windhoek, or vice versa in the opposite direction. In this time, most people focus their namibia trip on either the northern circuit or the southern circuit described below. We stayed at desert breeze lodge, which is a few km out of town and has wonderful views of the dunes.

For first time visitors, I'd suggest a classic self-drive route, which is a loop southwest of windhoek, covering about 340 kilometres (210 miles) of wild and rugged desert terrain. You'll only need 0-1 nights in windhoek at the start of your namibia itinerary, depending on when your flight lands and whether you want to rest before hitting the road.