Hoada Campsite

Unless you’re planning to spend your hols as a hunter gatherer, you’ll probably need to hoof it over to Kamanjab an hour’s drive away for supplies. There are bars and eateries in town as well, making it a handy spot for the swapping of travel tips with fellow tourers, and it’s also worth the trip to Peet Alberts Koppie, a couple of minutes beyond town, to see the 1,500 or so ancient rock engravings, depicting giraffes, anteaters, leopard and other local wildlife. It's a smaller-scale version of the UNESCO-protected Twyfelfontein paintings, which are about two and a half hours away if you're a real rock art aficionado. To see some of the wildlife for real, the Grootberg Plateau and the trail-filled Etendeka Mountains at the edge of Palmwag nature reserve (50 minutes' drive) have top hikes and drives through a palm-dotted landscape, frequented by mountain zebra and jackals, leopards, lions and the largest black rhino population in Africa. A little further off, but certainly worth it for one of the world’s weirdest sights, it’s around two hours’ drive to the Skeleton Coast National Park, a fog-swathed coastal desert full of shipwrecks and whale skeletons.