Namibia

Look northwest of South Africa and you'll find the wide-open spaces of Namibia. Deserts that stretch to an ever-vanishing horizon, jagged mountain peaks, flat gravel plains glistening with garnets cannot fail to stir your soul. In the Great White Place of Etosha National Park, your camera will likely click nonstop as golden lions pad over white sand, crimson-breasted shrikes flit among dry trees, and herds of black-faced impalas slake their thirst at water holes in the heat of day, watched by a crouching leopard.

Many countries in Africa boast teeming wildlife and gorgeous scenery, but few others, if any, can claim such limitless horizons; such huge, untamed wilderness areas; such a pleasant sunny climate; so few people (fewer than two per square mile); the oldest desert in the world; a wildly beautiful coastline; one of Africa's greatest game parks; plus—and this is a big bonus—a well-developed infrastructure and tourist facilities that are among the best in Africa. But you'll find all these and more in Namibia.

A former German colony, South West Africa, as it was then known, was a pawn in the power games of European politics. Although the Portuguese navigators were the first Europeans to arrive, in 1485, they quickly abandoned the desolate and dangerous Atlantic shores of the "Coast of Death," as they called it. By the late 1700s British, French, and American whalers were using the deepwater ports of Lüderitz and Walvis (Whalefish) Bay, which the Dutch, now settled in the Cape, then claimed as their own. A few years later, after France invaded Holland, England seized the opportunity to claim the territory together with the Cape Colony. Then it became Germany's turn to throw its hat into the ring. In the wake of its early missionaries and traders, it claimed the entire country as a German colony in 1884, only to surrender it to South African forces, who were fighting on the Allied side during World War I. South Africa was given a League of Nations mandate to administer the territory after the war, and despite a 1978 UN resolution to revoke the mandate, South Africa held on to Namibia for an additional stormy 10 years. A bitter and bloody bush war with SWAPO (South West African People's Organization) freedom fighters raged until Namibia finally won its independence on March 21, 1990, after 106 years of foreign rule. Although most of the earlier colonial influences have now vanished, everywhere you go in Namibia today you'll find traces of the German past—forts and castles, place-names, cuisine, and German efficiency.

Often called the "Land God Made in Anger" because of its stark, surreal landscapes, untamed wilderness, harsh environment, and rare beauty, Namibia was carved out by the forces of nature. The same savage, continuous geological movements produced not only spectacular beauty but also great mineral wealth: alluvial diamonds, uranium, platinum, lead, zinc, silver, copper, tungsten, and tin—still the cornerstone of Namibia's economy. Humans have lived here for thousands of years; the San (Bushmen) are the earliest known people, although their hunting-gathering way of life is now almost extinct. Today most Namibians are employed in the agricultural sector, from subsistence farms to huge cattle ranches and game farms.

Namibia prides itself on its conservation policies and vision. More and more, wildlife conservation is symbiotically linked with community development; in many conservation areas, local communities, the wildlife, and the environment have been successfully integrated, with benefits for all. Wilderness Damaraland Camp, for example, is an internationally acclaimed role model in linking tourism with community development projects. Hunting, a controversial issue for many people, is carefully controlled so that the impact on the environment is minimal the revenue earned is substantial and can often ploughed back into sustainable conservation.

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