Scroll Travel Tips & Advice Do You Need an International Driving Permit for Namibia? If your driving licence is in English and carries your photo and signature, Namibia’s own sources say it is enough on its own. If it is not in English, you need an International Driving Permit (IDP) as well. German, Austrian and…

Scroll Travel Tips & Advice Night Driving in Namibia, and What It Does to Your Cover Don’t drive between towns after dark in Namibia. The UK, US and German governments all advise against it, and some hire contracts put night-time incidents on you: African Tracks makes incidents on B and C roads outside sunrise to…

Scroll Travel Tips & Advice Taking a Namibian Hire Car to Botswana, Zambia or Zimbabwe Ask the hire company for cross-border permission when you book, not at the counter. Botswana is allowed by most of the firms we checked; Zambia and Zimbabwe come with more conditions, and some firms don’t allow Angola at all. At…

Scroll Travel Tips & Advice Swakopmund Fog: When It Clears and Why It Is There Swakopmund’s mornings are often grey because air cooled by the cold sea is trapped beneath warmer air, and its moisture hangs as fog. Fog on the Namib coast is most common in the mornings and evenings and generally clears during…

Scroll Travel Tips & Advice Solo Self-Drive in Namibia, Including as a Woman Travellers who have done it say solo self-drive in Namibia is entirely doable, including for women driving alone. Official advice places the main crime risk in towns, at fuel stops and around unattended vehicles, not on the open road. The bigger challenges…

Scroll Travel Tips & Advice Sandwich Harbour 4×4 Tours: Half-Day, Full-Day or Sunset? Book the full day if you have the time: six hours from the Walvis Bay Waterfront, N$3,825 per adult in 2026 with Sandwich Harbour 4×4, and most travellers who have done both say the half-day feels rushed. The four-hour half-day (N$3,095) still…

Scroll Travel Tips & Advice Namibia’s Green Season, Honestly: January to April The green season (January to April) trades hotter, wetter days and harder-to-spot game for green landscapes, newborn animals, prime birding, fewer visitors and lower prices. Namibia’s green season is the part of the year the brochures skim over, and the trade-offs are real…

Scroll Travel Tips & Advice Tipping in Namibia in 2026: What’s Actually Normal Plan on roughly N$75–150 per guest per day for a guide, N$50–150 per guest per night for lodge staff, 10–15% in restaurants and about N$5–10 for petrol attendants, in cash. Tipping advice for Namibia is everywhere, and the most-quoted guide still sets…

Scroll Travel Tips & Advice Tyre Pressure on Namibia’s Gravel, and the Second-Spare Question Run about 1.8 bar (cold) on gravel, or 10–20% below your tar pressure, and reflate before you rejoin tar. A second spare earns its place on remote routes. Gravel is where Namibian self-drives go wrong, and usually in the same way:…

Scroll Travel Tips & Advice The Sossusvlei 4×4 Shuttle and the Walk to Deadvlei Yes. Since 2 May 2026 you can drive the final 5 km to Sossusvlei in your own 4×4 and walk on to Deadvlei; the concessionaire shuttle is optional, listed at about N$250 per adult. The last stretch into Sossusvlei is 5…

Scroll Travel Tips & Advice What Namibian Car-Hire Insurance Does Not Cover Namibian car-hire insurance leaves more uncovered than most visitors expect. Even with an excess waiver, rental terms commonly exclude tyres, rims, windscreen and glass, sandblast and underbody damage, and water damage, and the single-vehicle rollover, the most likely accident on gravel, is excluded…

Scroll Travel Tips & Advice Sesriem Gate Times, Month by Month The Sesriem gate opens at sunrise and closes at sunset, so the time shifts through the year, from about 07:38 in June and July to about 06:00 in November and December. The inner gate to Sossusvlei opens roughly an hour earlier. NWR publishes no…

Scroll Travel Tips & Advice How to Book the Camps Inside Etosha You book Etosha’s rest camps directly with Namibia Wildlife Resorts (NWR). Its online portal at nwr.cimsoweb.com is working again in 2026, and you can also reserve by emailing reservations@nwr.com.na or phoning the Windhoek or Swakopmund office. Book several months ahead for the May…

Scroll Travel Tips & Advice Is My Namibia Itinerary Too Ambitious? What the Map Leaves Out The most repeated question on the Namibia travel internet is some version of “is this too ambitious?” — posted with a day count and a list of places, on TripAdvisor and Fodor’s, several times a week. The answers are…

Scroll Travel Tips & Advice Namibia eSIM and Mobile Coverage: What Actually Works Four separate threads are running on TripAdvisor right now arguing about whether an Airalo eSIM works in Namibia. The travellers contradict each other, nobody cites anything, and the answer is actually knowable. Here it is, with dates on it. MTC supports eSIM…

Scroll Travel Tips & Advice Sossusvlei and Deadvlei: The Final Five Kilometres Almost everything written about Sossusvlei describes the dunes. Almost nothing describes the five kilometres of sand that decide whether you reach them, a stretch the Namibian government closed and reopened inside forty-eight hours in 2026. Sossusvlei and Deadvlei sit at the end of…

Scroll Health on Safari Staying Healthy on a Namibia Safari: Heat, Water and Malaria Namibia is a low-risk destination for health. The classic circuit — Sossusvlei, Swakopmund, Damaraland and southern Etosha — is outside the malaria zone. The real issues are dry air at altitude, a 25°C daily temperature swing, and dehydration you cannot feel.…