Author: leighanne@laharbercreative.co.za

There’s nothing like travel to build an appetite. 

When you are on the road, exploring the best of Namibia, you are bound to find yourself visiting a handful of small coastal towns. 

For those who love fresh seafood, few pleasures compare to settling into one of the region’s finest restaurants or cafés and tucking into the catch of the day.

Swakopmund – Namibia’s Most Famous Seaside Town

Swakopmund is the kind of town that surprises most people. 

Visitors who’ve not done much reading up about the town tend to arrive expecting to have a standard stopover between visiting the dunes and seeing the Skeleton Coast, and then, once they’ve seen what an incredible town it is, they leave wondering why they did not book more nights. 

The town sits at the meeting point of the Namib Desert and the cold Atlantic Ocean, and the result of that collision is a culinary scene that is considerably more interesting than any landlocked safari destination can produce.

The Benguela Current, which flows northward along Namibia’s coastline from Antarctica, keeps the water cold and the fish extraordinarily rich in nutrients.

This is why Namibian seafood tastes the way it does. 

The fish here are not warm-water fish. They are cold-water fish, dense and clean-flavoured, and the difference is immediately apparent on the palate.

The Tug Restaurant

The Tug is the restaurant most consistently mentioned by travellers who know Swakopmund well, and for good reason. 

It has been built on the old jetty, directly above the water, in a converted tugboat building that gives it a particular atmospheric quality, especially at dusk when the light goes flat and silver over the still waters of the Atlantic. 

The menu focuses on local catch, with fresh hake, kabeljou, and kingklip prepared simply and well. The grilled kingklip, a firm white fish native to these cold southern waters, is the dish to order. The portions are generous, the wine list is solid, and it is best to book ahead, especially if you are travelling during the summer months (October to March) when the town fills up with Namibian holidaymakers, because even the locals can’t get enough of the seafood here.

Jetty 1905

A short walk from The Tug, Jetty 1905 occupies a restored section of Swakopmund’s historic pier and produces food that is a lot deeper and thought through than its tourist-facing location might suggest. 

The calamari here is exceptionally good, caught locally and cooked with restraint and to perfection, to prevent it from becoming rubbery. 

The grilled fish platter, which typically includes whatever the local boats brought in that morning, is one of the area’s best uses of what the cold Benguela Current produces. 

The setting, with the jetty stretching out over the water on one side and the town’s German colonial architecture visible on the other, is one of the more pleasing places to sit in Namibia with a glass of white wine and nowhere else to be.

While you are in Swakopmund…

The town’s restaurants are famous for being good, but the rest of Swakopmund and its surrounds deserve a spot on your Namibia itinerary.

While in the area, you can visit the Moon Landscape, the Welwitschia Plains, and set out on one of the living desert excursions that will introduce you to the Namib’s smaller, stranger inhabitants. 

The town itself is walkable, relaxed, and well-supplied with good coffee, good company and plenty of places to buy locally made snacks. 

To fully appreciate the town and its seafood, you should set aside a minimum of two nights. This will give you enough time to eat well and see the surrounding landscape properly.

Walvis Bay – The Oyster Capital of Southern Africa

Forty-five minutes south of Swakopmund, Walvis Bay is a working harbour town with a lagoon that turns pink with flamingos during late afternoons at certain times of the year, and an oyster industry that supplies restaurants across southern Africa. 

This is where serious seafood travellers come to treat their taste buds.

The Walvis Bay lagoon is a RAMSAR-listed wetland of international importance, home to greater and lesser flamingos, pelicans, and Cape fur seals. 

The same cold, nutrient-rich water that sustains this wildlife also makes the lagoon ideal for oyster cultivation. 

Namibian oysters, grown in the cold Benguela Current water, are plump, clean, and a lot brinier than their French or Irish counterparts. 

One could safely say that they taste of the cold Atlantic.

The Raft Restaurant

The Raft sits on a pontoon in Walvis Bay Lagoon, moored directly above the water, and it is one of those restaurants where the setting and the food are equally worth the visit. 

The oysters here are served fresh, chilled, and with minimal additions, which is exactly how an oyster is meant to be enjoyed. 

A dozen oysters at The Raft, with the lagoon spread out around you and a pelican conducting its own fishing operations at a polite distance, is the perfect lunch. 

The grilled prawns and the seafood platter are also delicious choices. The restaurant is well-known and rather popular, so reservations are strongly recommended.

Dockside Seafood & Grill 

The Dockside Seafood & Grill restaurant is one of the first names to pop up when looking for the best place to eat seafood in Walvis Bay.

It sits on the lagoon’s edge and has a menu that leans into local ingredients with slightly more ambition than the town’s other options, and the line fish of the day is always a real treat. 

Most of the menu is focused on seafood, and unlike other spots, diners stopping here can tuck into an authentic seafood boil, a mix of flavours and textures that are to die for. The restaurant also has a sushi menu.

Oyster Tours

If you really love oysters, and you want to learn everything there is to know about this decadent seafood treat, a guided oyster tour, which is offered by several local operators who work directly on the lagoon, is just the experience to sign up for. 

These one-of-a-kind tours typically involve a boat trip to the oyster beds, an explanation of how the cultivation works, and the opportunity to eat oysters pulled directly from the water, shucked on the boat, with nothing between the salty flavours of the Atlantic and your palate. 

It is as straightforward and as good as it sounds.

While you are in Walvis Bay…
Flamingos have put Walvis Bay on the Namibia tour map, and the lagoon flamingo cruise is one of the most unique wildlife experiences on the Namibian coast, particularly in the early morning when the light is soft and the birds are feeding actively. 

A trip to Sandwich Harbour, a protected wetland where desert dunes meet the Atlantic in a landscape that looks faintly improbable, is a half-day excursion from Walvis Bay that is also something worth doing while you are in the area. 

Lüderitz – For Rock Lobster and the End of the Road

Lüderitz sits at the end of a long, straight road through the southern Namib and feels, when you arrive, like a town that time has largely left alone. 

The German colonial architecture is more intact here than anywhere else in Namibia, the harbour is small and still working, and the wind comes off the Atlantic with a cold insistence that makes the welcoming warmth of a restaurant feel like a serious luxury.

What Lüderitz has, and what no other town in Namibia can match, is the rock lobster. 

Jasus lalandii, the Cape rock lobster, is caught in the cold waters off the southern Namibian and South African coast and is one of the more underrated seafood experiences in Africa. 

It is not the same animal as the warm-water spiny lobster served elsewhere on the continent. It is sweeter, denser, and a whole lot better.

Diaz Coffee Shop (Oyster & Wine Bar)

Diaz is the most established dining option in Lüderitz and the place most consistently recommended for rock lobster when it is in season, which is typically between October and April. 

The preparation is straightforward; it is grilled with butter and lemon, which is the correct approach for a seafood this good. 

The restaurant also produces a range of other fish dishes using local hake and snoek, a firm, oily fish popular along the southern African coast that divides opinion but, when well-prepared, is simply scrumptious. 

The setting, in a converted building in the town centre with views towards the harbour, is unfussy and comfortable, just like the food.

Sea-View Zum Sperrgebiet

For something slightly more enticing, Zum Sperrgebiet, a place named after the restricted diamond area that surrounds Lüderitz, has a menu that reflects the town’s German heritage and its coastal location. 

The seafood here is handled with the kind of European confidence that the colonial history has left behind, and the combination of cold Atlantic ingredients and German cooking traditions produces results that are more interesting than the town’s remote location might suggest.

While you are in Lüderitz…

Kolmanskop, the ghost town six kilometres from Lüderitz where the sand has slowly been reclaiming the abandoned diamond-mining buildings since the 1950s, is one of the more extraordinary places in southern Africa and requires no more than a morning to visit properly. 

The Lüderitz Peninsula is a great place for a coastal walk, and you’ll be treated to views of the cold Atlantic and regular sightings of African penguins, a species that surprises visitors who did not expect to find penguins in a desert country. 

And then there are the town’s German colonial buildings, particularly the Goerke House and the Evangelical Lutheran Church. You can see these during a slow afternoon walk.

A Note on Planning Your Coastal Namibia Itinerary

Namibia’s three seafood towns sit along the country’s coastline and connect naturally into a coastal itinerary that moves between Lüderitz in the south, Walvis Bay and its lagoon in the middle, and Swakopmund in the north. 

Each town has its own character and its own seafood speciality, and spending two nights in each will give you enough time to eat well, see the surrounding attractions, and understand what makes this stretch of coastline so unlike anything else in Africa.

For travellers who want to eat Walvis Bay oysters, Lüderitz rock lobster, and Swakopmund kingklip all on the same trip, and to do all of it in the right order and with the right amount of time in each place, you need to get your planning just right.

The dust in Kaokoland has its own distinct colour, one that is hard to miss.

It’s not like the pale gold you find further south in the Namib, the familiar colour that has become synonymous with the desert and gets in everywhere when the wind blows, but a deeper, darker rust colour.

It is the same reddish hue that appears on the skin and hair of the Himba people, who use it to create otjize, a paste of ground ochre and butterfat applied with a reverence rarely seen these days.

It has become their most recognisable feature, while also being one of the tribes most sacred practices.

Kaokoland is Himba country, and its villages have looked much the same for generations, long before the word ‘tourism’ meant anything at all.

As the wider world has drawn closer, interest in the Himba way of life has grown with it.

For travellers making their way through this part of Namibia, spending time in one of these villages remains the most meaningful way to understand this tribe, and to come away with a deep respect for their commitment to a traditional way of living.

In this guide, we’ll share everything you need to know before visiting the Himba villages of Namibia.

The Himba Way of Life

The last thing you want to do is walk into a culture with absolutely no background knowledge. Respectful interactions with anyone whose lifestyle you are unfamiliar with should always begin with knowing a bit about them and how they live.

Family is very important among the OvaHimba, and it is structured in a unique way.

Every person belongs to a patrilineal clan, called an oruzo, which decides where they live and who leads the household.

At the same time, they also belong to a separate matrilineal clan, the eanda, through which cattle and other inheritance pass down from a mother’s brother rather than a father.

It’s an arrangement that surprises most first-time visitors, and it means a Himba child grows up with a very different sense of belonging; one could even say that their sense of belonging is deeper than that of Western families.

Aside from family, little in Himba life exists apart from cattle.

In this culture, wealth is not measured in currency but in horns and hooves, and a family’s standing in the community rises and falls with the size of its herd.

Goats are also important, providing milk and meat when the cattle numbers are lower, and both animals are kept in a kraal, a circular enclosure of thorned branches, to keep predators out.

A homestead without livestock is almost unthinkable in the Himba culture, and even marriage negotiations are settled using cattle, with a bridewealth agreed between families long before a wedding takes place.

Because grazing in Kaokoland is unpredictable and rain arrives in short, uneven bursts, Himba families move around although they are not fully nomadic people.

When the land nearby stops providing for the herd, a homestead will pack up its huts, which are made from little more than sapling frames bound with mud and dung, and resettle somewhere the grass hasn’t yet been eaten down to the roots.

This makes the Himba Namibia’s last true semi-nomadic pastoralists, which means that when you are planning to visit Himba villages, it might not be as easy as finding a point on a map and heading to it. For this reason, and a couple of others, booking a tour is the better option.

Himba Culture

Ask most travellers what they picture when they think of the tribes of Namibia, and the answer is nearly always the same: skin the colour of ochre and mud-covered braids of the Himba people, even though they might not know the name of the people they are picturing.

That colour of the skin of the Himba people is iconically striking and comes from otjize, a paste made by grinding ochre stone into a fine powder and working it into butterfat until it turns to a thick, fragrant balm, often finished with a little omuzumba resin for scent.

Women apply it daily, working it into their skin and along the length of their hair.

But while Otjize is strikingly beautiful, it isn’t simply decorative. In a climate this dry and this hot, the paste works as a barrier against the burning sun and biting insects.

Because water is too precious to spare on daily washing, many Himba bathe in smoke instead, kneeling over a bowl of smouldering coals scattered with herbs until the fragrance settles into their skin. Women in the Himba culture are not allowed to wash with water at all, another reason why they use Otjize and smoke baths.

Still, ask a Himba woman why she wears it, and she’ll probably talk more about beauty before practicality. Red, in Himba belief, is the colour of the earth and of life itself.

Hair is also important in this culture, and it has its own kind of language.

A girl’s plaits are styled differently to a married woman’s, and the Erembe headdress, a striking crown of sheepskin and braided hair, is reserved for women who are newly married or who have recently had a child.

Jewellery follows a similar theme.

Necklaces made from iron, copper or ostrich eggshell aren’t chosen at random; they signal whether a woman is married, while the thick iron anklets many women wear once protected the lower leg from thorns and snake bites and now double as a kind of musical percussion with every step.

Visiting a Himba village

A Himba village is somebody’s home; it is not an open-air museum, so it is not a good idea to rock up at a village and invite yourself in.

The best visits are arranged through a guide with a good existing relationship with that specific community, ideally someone who can translate more than just words.

You can expect to be welcomed into the kraal, shown how otjize is made, and given the chance to sit with the women as they go about ordinary, daily tasks.

A Himba village tour is slow, low on spectacle, and can be immensely moving and insightful, adding a dash of something extra special to your overall Namibia tour.

There are a handful of things worth knowing before you go:

• Choose a guide with a standing relationship with that particular village, not a general permit to visit any homestead nearby.
• Ask before photographing anyone, especially children, and accept a no without pressing further.
• Pass any small gifts you have through your guide rather than handing them directly to children. (Maize meal, sugar or cooking oil tend to be more useful than sweets, and cause far fewer squabbles.)
• Let your guide manage any contribution you’d like to give to the community.
• Avoid touching anyone’s otjize, hair or jewellery unless you’re invited to.
• Stay close to the group rather than wandering towards huts or livestock unaccompanied.
• Remember that many Himba communities have chosen to welcome travellers, but that choice doesn’t mean that their daily life is a performance staged for an audience. Be respectful, always.

You won’t bring much home from a Himba village, but you will remember the humble people, the feel of otjize between your fingers, the low call of herders bringing cattle home, and the soft smile exchanged with a woman whose name you just didn’t catch.

We build every Himba village visit around moments like these, to give you a unique cultural experience that no other brochure can live up to.

Somewhere on the gravel road between Khorixas and the Skeleton Coast, I noticed the atmosphere and the landscape starting to change.

The light became flat and white. The air began to carry that faint smell of dust and dry grass. And then, without ceremony, a small sign appeared at the roadside, announcing that I was passing into an ancient place.

It was winter and the conditions were perfect for a Namibian road trip. This is a country I have wanted to travel to my whole life, and while the world seemed to be becoming more topsy-turvy than usual, I decided to book that trip. I had the feeling in my bones that it was now or never.

In my first week in the country, I hit all the hot spots. I spent a few days in Windhoek, and realised that it is so much smaller than I had imagined. A few days was really all I needed to see it all.

Then I headed out into the wild and unknown (at least, unknown to me). I went west first, travelling down the Skeleton Coast and visiting Swakopmund, and then I drove east to Damaraland to see one of Namibia’s most fascinating sights.

What is the Petrified Forest in Namibia, Exactly?

The name of this place sets up an expectation the site does not quite meet.

There is no forest, at least not in the conventional sense. No trees are standing upright, stripped of their colour, frozen mid-growth.

What there is, scattered across roughly 300 by 800 metres of open Damaraland scrubland, are the trunks. Enormous, horizontal, broken into pieces by time and weather but otherwise astonishingly intact.

Some stretch to 34 metres in length, the largest reach six metres in circumference, the annual growth rings are still visible, and the bark texture is still there.

These trees are completely petrified, meaning they have turned entirely into stone.

Around 50 individual trunks are exposed at the official site near Khorixas, with several hundred more thought to lie partially buried in the surrounding desert terrain.

They belong to an ancient group of cone-bearing plants called Gymnosperms, the ancestors of modern conifers and cycads, and they are believed to have floated here on a prehistoric floodwater event during the Permian period, carried down from what is now Angola, before being buried under alluvial sediment.

Deprived of oxygen, they could not decompose.

Instead, over millions of years, each cell was individually replaced by silica in a process called silicification. The result is wood that is, technically, quartz. The same hardness as a crystal.

In 1950, after souvenir hunters began helping themselves to fragments, the site was declared a National Monument. It is now a protected heritage site, and the minimum fine for removing even a small piece of petrified wood is 5 000 Namibian dollars.

The trunks have survived 280 million years. The rules are there to make sure they survive the next hundred.

What it’s Like to Walk Through the Forest

I’m not going to be cliché and say it’s a humbling experience. But it sure is one of the most interesting places you’ll ever see.

A guided walk is compulsory; you cannot explore here as you would in, say, Kolmanskop.

The guides at the Petrified Forest are knowledgeable, never in a hurry, and incredibly proud of what they are showing you.

They will point out the growth rings, they will tell you which trunks have been partially excavated and which are still emerging from the earth, and they will show you the places where the stone has fractured along the original grain of the wood.

Give yourself at least an hour here but aim for more.

The walk is approximately 800 metres and mostly flat, which makes it accessible, but the heat in Damaraland is not to be underestimated. Early morning visits are considerably more comfortable, and the quality of the light at that hour does something rather lovely to the colour of the stone.

The site also lies within a semi-desert environment rich in unusual flora.

Alongside the petrified trunks, visitors will find Welwitschia mirabilis plants growing in the surrounding scrub.

These are among the most extraordinary plants on Earth, ancient, slow-growing desert survivors that can live for over a thousand years. They look like nothing else you’ll see, in Namibia or elsewhere.

You can read up more about the Welwitschia plant, including what makes them so remarkable and where else they appear across Namibia, here.

How to Get There and What to Know Before You Go

The Petrified Forest is located approximately 40 kilometres west of Khorixas on the C39 road, in Namibia’s Kunene Region, in Damaraland.

The road is gravel but generally in good condition and accessible by standard vehicle, though a 4×4 is always preferable on Namibian gravel roads if you are driving yourself.

Entry fees are approximately 250 Namibian dollars per person, and this includes a government-appointed guide. The site has covered parking, which is a small but welcome detail on a hot Damaraland morning.

There are several privately run roadside sites in the area advertising petrified trees. These are not the official National Monument. They vary considerably in quality and conservation standards. For the full context, proper guiding, and the most significant trunks, the official site is the one to visit.

The Petrified Forest as Part of a Damaraland Itinerary

The Petrified Forest is often treated as a stop on a longer route through Damaraland.

The region is one of Namibia’s most scenically beautiful spots, a landscape of flat-topped mountains, open plains, and, during the off-season in particular, a lovely silence that makes the experience even more peaceful.

Within easy reach of the Petrified Forest are Twyfelfontein, the UNESCO World Heritage Site where thousands of San rock engravings cover the sandstone hillside, and the Organ Pipes, a dramatic formation of parallel dolerite columns rising from a dry riverbed a short distance away.

The Burnt Mountain, a geological oddity of scorched-looking shale hills, is also nearby. These sites, along with a visit to the Petrified Forest, can be visited during a half-day or full-day loop from a Damaraland base.

From Damaraland, most itineraries continue north to Etosha National Park, making the Petrified Forest a natural last morning stop before the road turns towards the floodlit waterholes and open plains of Etosha, where I spent the next part of my holiday on safari.

That said, it would be a mistake to treat the Petrified Forest as merely a tick on the way to somewhere else.

While it is not dramatic in the conventional sense and there are no animals and no sweeping views. The stones, the light, and the bewildering knowledge that you are standing next to something that has existed since before the dinosaurs make it one of the Namibia destinations you’ll never forget.

Plan your visit with Namibia Safaris

Namibia Safaris builds itineraries that move through the country with care, connecting visitors with the landscape’s most meaningful sites in a way that allows them to get into the experience fully.

For those who want to see Namibia properly, not quickly, the team at Namibia Safaris is the right place to start.