Signature Namibia,
Private Fly-In Safari

Arrival, Etosha East

Your Secret Namibia representative meets you at Hosea Kutako International Airport, hands over your itinerary and luxury safari care package and walks you across to your private charter. About an hour and a half later you land on the Onguma airstrip, on the eastern boundary of Etosha National Park, where the camp's guide is waiting. Camp Kala is the most exclusive camp on the 34,000 hectare Onguma reserve: four open-plan suites on stilts above a busy waterhole, a butler, and a private guide and vehicle for your stay.

Three nights give you two full days in the park and time on the reserve itself. Early drives through the Von Lindequist Gate to the waterholes around Namutoni and Fischer's Pan, where elephant, lion, black rhino and the big plains herds gather in the dry season; sundowner drives on Onguma; a guided walk with your tracker in the morning cool. Every drive is private, so the day runs to your pace, and the waterhole below the deck carries on after dark.

• Included at the lodge: Private Etosha game drives, Onguma sunset drives, Guided bush walk

Damaraland

A short flight west takes you over the Etosha pan and the escarpment to the airstrip at Twyfelfontein, and a half-hour drive brings you up to the camp. Onduli Ridge sets six suites among the granite boulders of a ridge in the Doro Nawas Conservancy, with the Brandberg on the horizon and a roll-out star bed on every deck. The camp runs entirely on solar power and is fully inclusive, with its activities part of the stay.

Damaraland is the home of Namibia's desert-adapted elephant and black rhino, and three nights give you time for both: an early morning tracking the rhino with the conservancy rangers, a drive down the dry Aba Huab and Huab riverbeds for the elephant, and an afternoon at the Twyfelfontein rock engravings, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Nature walks, solar e-bikes across the plains and sundowners on the rocks fill the rest, and the night skies here are among the darkest in the country.

• Included at the lodge: Desert-adapted elephant tracking, Desert-adapted rhino tracking, Twyfelfontein rock engravings, Nature drives and walks, Star bed sleep-out

Skeleton Coast

Your aircraft flies you north-west over the Kunene's dry rivers to the airstrip at Möwe Bay, inside the Skeleton Coast National Park, where a Shipwreck Lodge vehicle collects you for the drive up the coast. The lodge is the only one inside the park: ten timber cabins shaped like the wrecks that gave the coast its name, set on the dunes between the Hoarusib and Hoanib rivers, about 45 km north of Möwe Bay, with the Atlantic in front and the desert behind.

Two full days here are spent with the lodge guides: up the Hoarusib river valley to the Clay Castles and the desert elephant that follow the water, along the shoreline to the wrecks and the seal colony, and out to the old Westies diamond diggings. Lunch is on the beach, sundowners are on the dunes, and the fog that rolls in off the cold Benguela current is part of the atmosphere. Sandboarding and quad biking on the dunes are there if you want them.

• Included at the lodge: Hoarusib river and Clay Castles excursion, Shoreline drive to the shipwrecks and seal colony, Beach lunch, Sundowners on the dunes

Swakopmund

After breakfast the lodge drives you back to Möwe Bay, and your charter follows the coastline south over the Skeleton Coast and Cape Cross to Swakopmund. The Strand Hotel stands on the Mole, the old harbour wall, with the beach on one side and the town's cafes and galleries a short walk away. Two nights here are a change of pace: sea-facing rooms, three restaurants and a brewery under one roof, and Namibia's German colonial architecture at the door.

Day 11 is on the water and in the dunes. A morning catamaran cruise on the Walvis Bay lagoon brings seals, dolphins and pelicans to the boat, and after an oyster lunch a guided 4x4 excursion takes you into Sandwich Harbour, where the dunes of the Namib fall straight into the Atlantic. It is one of the few places in the world where that happens, and the drive along the beach between the tide and the dune face is a highlight of the coast.

• Included at the lodge: Sandwich Harbour 4x4 excursion, Walvis Bay lagoon catamaran cruise

Sossusvlei

The last flight of the safari runs south over the Namib Sand Sea to the airstrip at &Beyond Sossusvlei Desert Lodge, set within a 12,715 hectare private reserve that borders the NamibRand Nature Reserve and the Namib-Naukluft National Park. Ten stone and glass suites and a two-bedroom family suite face the dunes, each with a private plunge pool, a fireplace and a retractable skylight over the bed for the stars. There is a walk-in wine cellar, a wellness space and an observatory with its own telescope and resident guide.

Three nights give you the classic Sossusvlei morning, driving into the Namib-Naukluft at dawn to climb the dunes and walk out to Deadvlei before the heat, and two more days for the private reserve: nature drives, guided walks, solar e-bikes over the plains, and an evening at the telescope under some of the darkest skies on earth. The scenic helicopter flight is the one that stays with you, following the dune sea from the lodge to the vlei and back.

• Included at the lodge: Sossusvlei and Deadvlei excursion, Scenic helicopter flight, Stargazing at the lodge observatory, Nature drives and guided walks, Solar e-biking

Departure

A last breakfast with the dunes in front of you, then your charter takes you back to Hosea Kutako International Airport in a little over an hour, in time for your international flight. Your Secret Namibia representative sees you through check-in.