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“I am an expert on Prof. Gries, but certainly no Brandberg expert”, Dr Helge Kleifeld, a historian and geographer from Cologne in Germany remarked drily at the end of his three-day expedition to Königstein in the Brandberg Massif on 2 January this year. Accompanied by archaeologist Martina Trognitz and pilot Lukas Gehring he climbed the highest mountain in Namibia to commemorate the centenary of the first ascent by a European. The party who scaled the 2573 m peak on 2 January 1918 consisted of Prof. Ernst August Gries, Reinhard Maack and Georg Schulze.

It’s a scorching day in Etosha National Park. Azaro, a Belgian Shepherd dog, is on duty in the parched landscape. He is about to pass a sizable dense bush when he suddenly pauses for a moment, sniffs the air and then crawls underneath the bush to the other side. There he barks and sits. A small piece of raw ivory is lying between the dry leaves. Dog handler Bernd Brell praises the faithful four-legged detector dog and rewards him with a ball to play with.

The openbill, a species of stork almost sixty centimetres tall, delicately wades through the shallow water. When it scoops up a sea snail it deftly pulls the animal out of its hard shell. If a mussel cannot be cracked, the openbill drops it in a sunny spot on the riverbank where it will open eventually. Mussels are always deposited in the same spot. Currently such accumulations are found at the Chobe River Camp in the eastern parts of the Zambezi Region where openbills take advantage of the Chobe River’s low water level to forage for their favourite food. 

In some years good rainfalls in the south bring about a rare and dazzling display of nature. Then a huge field of flowering lilies draws many visitors to Sandhof farm, some 40 km north of Maltahöhe, who spontaneously visit the usually dry clay pan.

Today, the German speaking first graders at the Delta School Windhoek tackled their first school day with a Zuckertüte in their arms and a schoolbag on their backs, just like their parents and grandparents many years before them. Not only at this government school but at all schools in the country where German speaking children start their first year, the “Zuckertüte” plays an essential role.

In 2015, the then 27 year old Namibian Götz Neef, a qualified botanist and entomologist, joined the research team of the Okavango Wilderness Project thanks to his professor. During their first expedition they travelled 2414 kilometres from the source of the Cuito in the Central Angolan Highlands, through Namibia, to the end of the waterway, south of the world-famous Okavango Delta in Botswana. 

Giant eagle owls, also known as Verreaux's eagle-owl or the milky eagle owl, not only use the old nests of secretary birds or eagles for breeding, but also the top of sociable weaver and hamerkop nests. They raise one chick, sometimes two of them, which stay with their parents until the next breeding season the following year. This owl species is the second-largest in the country.

Who would have thought that a rhino hunt in 1929 would result in the founding of one of Namibia’s most popular holiday resorts? The story of how Major Hentie van der Merwe discovered a deep valley of sand a few miles south of the Omaruru river mouth was first published on 29 April 1977 by the Brandwag magazine. It was a spot with more than enough fresh water and an abundance of game. Henties Bay was named after this Major. 

It stands there, silver-coloured, shimmering in the sunlight, a bit broad with a square rear end and that nice “Namibia2Go” logo on its doors. The car’s interior has lots of space for children, dogs and shopping bags, a nice city car. And on top of that it’s all-wheel drive? That is what the offer says. I am tasked to test the Duster in the Kalahari Desert.