I had conviction. The GPS did not. Every few metres, it insisted on a U-turn. I ploughed on, sand scraping the chassis of the four-wheel drive. I marvelled at the ground I was covering even as the troughs deepened and the vehicle pitched and lurched. It was exhilarating, until it wasn’t. One particularly deep pitch sent sand cascading over the bonnet.
Sense finally prevailed and I yielded to the GPS. I was trying to access the Hoanib Valley on a route I had taken back in 2017 with Namibian conservation icon Garth Owen-Smith and his partner Margaret Jacobsohn.
Garth, who died of cancer in 2020, was a man I greatly admired for his dedication to communities in conservation. The journey was part homage to him and part submission to the pull of the desert.
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Seasonal floods in northern Namibia have grown increasingly destructive, a trend linked to climate change. The water vanishes almost as quickly as it arrives, swallowed by the riverbed. The latest surge had dumped tons of sand across the floodplain, smothering the access route. Like Garth, it was gone.
Instead, I took the long way around, climbing over a rocky plateau before plunging into a deep gorge. The drive was bone-shaking, stones clattering against the wheel well, sunburnt rock walls closing in on either side. At last, the gorge released me onto the Hoanib riverbed – a sandy highway lined with towering trees, their shade cooling the burning soil.
Beyond, barren hills and dunes stretched to the horizon in washes of orange, beige and blue. The world outside felt distant and unreachable, and in that isolation I found a deep sense of ease.
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I had been less at ease on my previous trip. On our way north to the Hoanib, Garth had steered his Land Rover over obscure desert shortcuts, checking in on conservancy communities. Some reported lions attacking livestock, a trend brought on by prolonged drought.
At one small village in Torra Conservancy, chairperson Tommy Adams told us that a pride of lions had broken into a woman’s poorly made kraal. “More than 100 goats were killed,” he said. “That woman was crying on the ground. She said, ‘Tommy they’ve killed all my goats. Do you know how long it’s taken me to build that herd? Now I have nothing.’”
We camped that night on the edge of a dry riverbed. In the morning, I crawled out of my tent to see Garth intently studying the ground nearby. “Big male,” he said. “Couple of females. Cubs too.” The tracks were barely 10m away.
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After another day’s drive across harsh terrain, we camped at the foot of a rocky hill cut by a stream. As we sat around the fire, a lion began calling – a sawing, rasping sound that echoed off the rocks above. I crept into my tent with trepidation.
Next morning, Garth rose before me and noticed that I had barricaded the entrance with the camping chairs. “It’s not the lions that you hear,” he said, smiling. “It’s the lions you didn’t hear.”
I dwelled on those moments as I weaved towards an island of ana trees where a giraffe and her calf browsed on seed pods. A male walking towards them stopped, studying me warily. I turned off the engine and marvelled at these giants.
Dwarfed by trees whose deep roots tap into the water table below, they depend on this lifeline for food. Without trees, they would not survive here, and neither would the lions that hunt them.
With little grazing in or around the valley, plains game are virtually absent, save for a small population of superbly adapted oryx. Yet the lions have carved out a way to survive. They travel west to the coast, some 45km from the valley’s heart, to prey on fur seals, or head far inland in search of game or livestock. Within the valley itself, they have mastered the art of hunting giraffe, one of Africa’s most formidable prey species.
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In his extensive studies on desert-adapted lions, researcher Philip Stander has documented a remarkable suite of strategies to tackle giraffes in an environment where prey is scarce and failure costly. Hunting in coalitions, the cats work together to isolate and exhaust the giraffes. They steer their quarry into softer sand where their long-legged strides become a liability rather than an advantage.
What follows is not the explosive ambush of a savannah hunt, but a drawn-out pursuit that gradually saps the giraffes’ strength. Closing in, the lions focus on the hindquarters, attempting to destabilise their prey, risking the fatal proximity of their brutal kicks before delivering a killer bite.
I had hoped to interview Philip but, as his former research assistant Emsie Verwey joked, he is such a desert hermit that finding him is like trying to find Bigfoot.
Emsie had left lion research and found her own passion in another remarkable creature. She had been working as manager of Hoanib Skeleton Coast Camp, one of just two safari camps in the valley, when a staff member told her about a pair of brown figures he had spotted nearby. On investigating, Emsie found what appeared to be a den. She set up a camera trap and the footage revealed a brown hyena lair. “A female stuck her head down the hole and out came these two little cubs,” she says.
Emsie visited every morning, observing the family through binoculars while also keeping the camera rolling. “That’s when I began understanding what it took for these hyenas to survive.”
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Locating a small number of clans in the area, she discovered that brown hyenas travel vast distances in extreme conditions in search of food. “I noticed a female returning to her den with part of a zebra,” she says, “but the nearest herd was at least 50km away.”
The hyenas’ social lives in the den offer a contrast to their solitary foraging. There is grooming, interaction, a kind of cohesion. Cubs grow up in this harsh environment with an early understanding of distance and risk. When they leave the den after 12-15 months, the valley becomes both opportunity and threat.
Predators, competition and the sheer scale of the environment all conspire against them. Many die before they reach adulthood (two and a half years), particularly young males whose inclination to investigate rather than avoid proves costly.
Yet they persist, moving through the landscape as both participants and beneficiaries of its harsh economy. They are scavengers, but such a description feels inadequate. In a place where nothing can be squandered, they are smart and proficient.
They range as far as the fur seal colony to scavenge on carcasses – some from lion kills. Emsie told me of an encounter with a hyena she had named Bolt. “During Covid lockdown I felt quite hopeless. I didn’t know what I’d do if hyenas weren’t an option,” she says. “But I could set my watch by Bolt. At 7am, he would be out at the seal colony. He got me out of bed in the mornings.”
She was sitting watching him sleeping one moonlit night when he rose and came over to her, so close that she “could feel his warm breath on my face.” Bolt investigated then moved on, an animal entirely at ease in a world that is, for most visitors, deeply unfamiliar. Emsie followed him into the night, listening to his footfalls and breathing.
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I spent the next night at Hoanib Valley Camp, in the mouth of a secluded glen. It had been one of Garth’s favourite camping spots; it was he that recommended the site to the safari company. From the large tents, the view over the riverbed to the distant hills is benign in the pink evening light. With a gin and tonic in hand, it even appears survivable. But it’s a mirage, for humans at least.
Another creature that has adapted to these harsh conditions is, improbably, the hungry, thirsty elephant. A man-made waterhole helps sustain elephants and other wildlife in the valley, as well as offering reliable viewing for camp guests.
Further afield, elephants dig for water with their feet and trunks, and scale towering dunes to reach distant grasslands. Yet they are drawn back to the valley’s waterhole and ana trees, for their moisture-rich roots and bark, and nutritious seed pods.
I joined a morning game drive and we followed a small herd towards the waterhole. They moved slowly, looking impossibly small against the towering rock. As they approached the waterhole, they picked
up speed, spurred by the lure of easily accessible water.
Further along, we spotted a lone bull and edged as close as we dared. He was unperturbed, more intent on reaching the pods high in the canopy, since the lower branches had been stripped clean. He stretched his great frame upwards, straining for the remaining bounty. Lifting his front foot, he finally managed to hook a pod with his trunk and delicately plucked it free. He carefully brought it to
his mouth, chewing with quiet satisfaction.
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In the Hoanib, if something can be reached, it will be, regardless of the effort. That is the transaction this remote desert offers. It strips away assumptions and replaces them with something enduring
– the understanding that survival here is never accidental. It is deliberate and hard-won.
Forgoing the comforts of the camp, I spent my final night out on my own, a pithy attempt to feel something of the Hoanib’s rawness. I pitched my little tent in a broad gully, far enough from the trees to avoid the elephants.
I had learned my lesson. On the journey with Garth, after visiting the Hoanib, we had set up camp on an island in the Hoarusib riverbed to the north. It had been a particularly hot day, so I’d positioned my tent in the shade of an ana tree while Garth pitched his in the baking sun. I noticed a trace of mirth on his face as he considered my abode.
Late that night I woke to the sound of branches thudding onto the canvas above. Peering out the gauze window, I realised an elephant’s leg was blocking my view.
The creature stood directly over my tent, reaching into the branches, feeding with methodical patience. It’s disconcerting lying prone while a multi-ton animal rearranges the architecture above you, with the only barrier a sheet of fabric. Yet somehow I was lulled into calmness by hearing its deep rumblings of satisfaction.
I wasn’t seeking that experience again and this time, I slept peacefully and without interruption. I crawled out of my tent in the early morning to gaze at the dry riverbed lined with trees, the sunburned crags and the distant hills. I felt small and finite, as if every breath I took in this valley was precious.
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