05 The Namib Coast Namibia
The Skeleton Coast Run
Twelve days north from Swakopmund up the fog coast to the Kunene river, the longest and most expensive journey we run, and the only one we will not shorten.
- Duration
- 12 days
- Party
- 4 to 6
- Season
- May to September
- From, per person
- £24,800
The route
- Walvis Bay
- Swakopmund
- Cape Cross
- Torra Bay
- Hoanib valley
- Kunene river
The Skeleton Coast is the northern third of Namibia’s Atlantic shore, where the cold Benguela current meets desert and makes a fog that sits on the beach most mornings until eleven. It is called that for the whale bones and ship hulls that used to line it. Most of the hulls have gone into the sand. The name has not.
Why it costs what it costs
At £24,800 per person this is the most expensive journey in the catalogue, and the arithmetic is not mysterious. There are two vehicles, because one vehicle in the northern park is a rescue call waiting to happen. There are two guides. The Torra Bay camp is closed outside December and opened for us by arrangement. And the last leg is a charter aircraft, because the road from the Kunene to anywhere is two days of corrugated gravel.
The elephants
The Hoanib’s elephants are not a separate species, but they are a population that has learned to live in a place with almost no water: they walk further, drink less, and know where the seep springs are. The tracker finds them; the vehicles stay a long way back. On some departures we see them on the first morning. On one, we saw them on the last.
On visiting Himba families
We visit two households near the river that Ndapewa has known since the 2000s, and we pay them directly, and we do not bring anybody else’s tour group. There is a version of this visit that is a performance for cameras, and it is ten minutes from the lodge. We do not go to that one.
Day by day
The shape of it
Days 1–2
Swakopmund
A German colonial seaside town in fog, which is stranger than it sounds. Vehicle and radio briefing on day two.
Day 3
Cape Cross
The Cape fur seal colony, about a hundred thousand animals, and the smell to go with them. Out before lunch.
Days 4–5
Torra Bay
Into the national park proper. Two nights at a camp that opens only in December — outside that, it is ours by arrangement.
Days 6–8
Hoanib valley
Inland along a dry river where desert-adapted elephants walk the riverbed. Three nights, on foot and in the vehicles, with a tracker.
Days 9–11
Kunene river
The Angolan border. A small lodge on the river, a morning with Himba families Ndapewa has known for twenty years, and nothing else scheduled.
Day 12
Windhoek
Light aircraft from the Hartmann valley strip to Windhoek. There is no road option we would put you on.
What the price covers
Included
What £24,800 buys
- Eleven nights: one hotel, two camps and two lodges, all eight-bed or smaller
- Ndapewa Shituula, a second guide, and a tracker in the Hoanib
- Two long-range Land Cruisers, radios, and a recovery kit we have used
- Park and conservancy fees, paid to the conservancies directly
- All meals and drinks from Cape Cross onward
- The light-aircraft charter from the Kunene to Windhoek
Not included
And, pointedly, what it doesn't
- Flights to Walvis Bay and out of Windhoek
- Self-drive, in any section, for any reason
- A fly-in visit to a shipwreck. The famous ones are mostly sand now.
- Photography of Himba families without their explicit say-so
- A shorter version. People ask. It does not exist.