Product Description

Southern Africa's magnificent desert state truly explored, from the highest dunes in the world to the ghost towns and shipwrecks of the coast. Describes hiking opportunities amid the scenery of Fish River Canyon and valuable tips on overland travel through Zambia to the astonishing Victoria Falls.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #418084 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

A useful guide for an as yet little-known part of Africa
This guide provides up-to-date and accurate information for the traveller, whether back-packing or upmarket. The sections on accommodation, sites to visit and places to eat were useful and validated for several examples I visited. Small inserts giving a tongue-in-cheek narrative on items of history, location or features prevent the book from being another dry travel guide. The author has also taken the trouble to obtain details of contacts for such activities as dolphin-watching and horse-riding. Much recommended as the only book you need to take to Namibia - provided it is kept up-to-date.

Info you need, but not convincing
I get the impression this book was written very quickly on a flying visit to the country. All the useful information is in there, places to stay and so on, but it's missing some of the personal insights you normally expect from lonely planet. Large chunks seem to be copied from Namibia's own tourist literature (The desciption of the scenic drive over the Welwitchia Plains is almost word for word the guide you get when you obtain your permit).

Guide books are at their best when you find yourself somewhere interesting and you can refer to the book for some more information on where you are or what you're looking at. This book has nothing like that, and it suffers because of it.

A much better alternative is Bradts guide to the same country.

A Comprehensive Travel Guide
Just like most of the Lonely Planet travel guides, this guide to Namibia is very comprehensive and manages to fit a lot of information into a surprisingly small amount of space. This book contains all the information you will ever need to know about Namibia and more. The book has been deliberately kept to a smallish size. This is very useful in that you can easily take the book to Namibia with you and it will not weigh you down. The only disadvantage of having so much information crammed into such a small space is that the writing is quite small. It would have also been nice if more of the pictures and illustrations were in colour. This, however, is a small gripe. This is a great book and if you are going to Namibia then I warmly recommend that you buy it.