Kunene River

Light aircraft come in from Windhoek’s Eros airport, or on shorter legs from Damaraland, landing on bush strips including Hartmann’s Valley. From there a 4×4 transfer of an hour or so crosses empty desert to the river. Helicopter charters run for anyone who wants the Baynes Mountains, Epupa Falls and the Skeleton Coast beneath them on the way in, compressing what would be a multi-day overland approach into a single flight.

The overland alternative is a multi-day 4×4 expedition, low-range gears and high clearance both needed on rocky, unmaintained tracks. It is the reason almost nobody arrives this way, and the reason the fly-in from Windhoek or Damaraland is the standard route into a region with almost no other infrastructure. At the river mouth the coastal strip falls inside Skeleton Coast National Park, where off-road driving is prohibited, protecting lichen fields and crusted soils that take decades to recover.

Licensed guides lead quad biking on dune routes where the wind erases the tracks.

Inland, the Hartmann and Marienfluss valleys sit within communal conservancy land, and the rules loosen a little. Licensed guides lead quad biking on dune routes where the wind erases the tracks. Boat trips run on the calmer channels of the Kunene, bringing crocodiles, monitor lizards and waterbirds close, and there are gorges to walk between them. Fully staffed mobile camps, with a private guide, cook and camp crew, work well for anyone crossing both valleys at once.

The region’s isolation kept the Himba clear of the upheavals that broke Herero communities further south. Both women and men dress their skin and hair with otjize, a paste of butterfat, ash and red ochre that marks the colour of the earth and turns back the sun. Upstream, the river changes character entirely, dropping 37 metres at Epupa Falls, at its fullest in March and April when the highland rain comes down.