Fish River Canyon, Namibia: Travel Guide & Luxury Rail Tours

Fish River Canyon cuts a 100-mile gash across the stony plains of far southern Namibia, in the //Karas Region a few hours’ drive south of Keetmanshoop and roughly 400 miles south of Windhoek. It is the largest canyon in Africa and, by most measures, the second largest on earth after the Grand Canyon: about 17 miles across at its widest and some 1,800 feet deep where the inner gorge falls away from the viewpoints on the eastern rim. The scale is hard to read at first, because there is almost nothing to give it away — no forest, no towns, no traffic. Just layer after layer of dolerite and quartzite falling into shadow, and a thin green thread of river far below.

The canyon is very old. The rock at the bottom was laid down well over a billion years ago; the trough itself was opened by faulting and then deepened over millions of years by the Fish River, Namibia’s longest interior river, which now runs only seasonally and shrinks to a chain of still pools through the dry months. Long before it was a park, the gorge was known to the Nama people, and the hot springs at its southern end — Ai-Ais, “burning water” — were used long before the first European travellers arrived in the 1850s. Today the canyon sits inside the /Ai-/Ais-Richtersveld Transfrontier Park, a conservation area shared with South Africa. Palace Tours reaches this corner of Namibia by private train: Rovos Rail runs its Namibia Safari between Walvis Bay and Pretoria, and the desert stretch of that journey is one of the few ways to see this country’s emptiest landscapes without spending days behind the wheel.

What to see in Fish River Canyon

• Hobas Viewpoint — The classic first look, on the eastern rim near the park’s northern gate. The river below curls through a near-perfect hairpin, and because the rim here is flat and open you can walk a few hundred metres in either direction and get a completely different composition.
• Sunset (Hikers’) Viewpoint — A short drive from Hobas and the best place to be in the last hour of daylight, when the low sun rakes across the terraces and the inner gorge fills with blue shadow while the upper walls turn copper.
• The inner gorge and the Fish River Hiking Trail — A famously demanding 53-mile route from Hobas to Ai-Ais, open only in the cooler months and only to fit, self-sufficient walkers. Even if you never set foot on it, looking down at the trail’s descent gully explains the canyon’s proportions better than any figure.
• Ai-Ais Hot Springs — At the canyon’s southern end, sulphurous water emerges at around 60°C and is cooled into pools and baths. It is the traditional finishing point for hikers and a pleasant, slightly surreal soak in the middle of the desert.
• The Quiver Tree Forest near Keetmanshoop — About two hours north, a dense stand of Aloidendron dichotomum, the quiver tree, whose pale forked branches were hollowed out by San hunters to hold arrows. Best at dawn or under a full moon.
• Giant’s Playground — Beside the quiver trees, a field of dolerite boulders stacked into improbable columns by 170 million years of weathering along cooling joints. A short marked loop takes you through it.
• Kolmanskop, near Lüderitz — Further west, a diamond-boom town abandoned in the 1950s and now half-swallowed by dunes, with sand drifting waist-deep through ballrooms and bathhouses. One of the most photographed ghost towns anywhere.
• The night sky — Southern Namibia has some of the darkest skies on the planet. On a moonless night the Milky Way throws a shadow, and the Magellanic Clouds sit plainly overhead.

What to eat in Fish River Canyon

This is game and grill country. Namibian cooking blends Nama and Herero traditions with a heavy German colonial inheritance, and the result is unusually meat-forward: oryx (gemsbok), kudu and springbok appear as steaks, medallions and carpaccio, and Namibian beef is famously good — the country’s cattle are grass-fed on open veld and much of the crop is exported to Europe. A braai (barbecue) is the default social meal, usually with boerewors, a coiled farm sausage, and pap, a stiff maize porridge, alongside. Biltong and droëwors — air-dried spiced meat and sausage — are the road-trip staple and the thing most visitors end up carrying home.

The German legacy shows up in bakeries and on menus as Eisbein, sauerkraut, Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte and, above all, beer: Windhoek Lager and Tafel are brewed to the 1516 Reinheitsgebot purity law and served very cold. On the coast at Walvis Bay and Swakopmund, where the Rovos Rail journey begins, the menu shifts entirely — cold Benguela current oysters, kingklip and rock lobster. Look out too for kapana, spiced beef strips grilled over open coals at roadside stalls, and, in season, the Kalahari truffle, which pushes up after good rains. Rooibos tea, from just over the South African border, is the standard afternoon drink.

Best time to visit

April to September. The canyon lies in one of the hottest, driest corners of southern Africa, and summer daytime highs from November to March routinely pass 40°C — which is precisely why the hiking trail closes for those months. The winter dry season brings clear skies, cool mornings and comfortable mid-20s afternoons, with the best light on the rim in May, June and July. Nights can drop close to freezing, so pack layers even though you are in a desert. Rain, when it comes at all, falls in short summer storms; a good rainy season means the Fish River briefly runs strongly and the plains flush green for a few weeks.

Good to know

• Distances are the real cost here. Southern Namibia is very thinly populated and services are far apart. Travelling by private train removes the long gravel-road driving days entirely, which is the main reason it suits this region so well.
• Carry more water than you think you need. The air is extremely dry and dehydration creeps up on you at the viewpoints, where there is no shade at all.
• There are no barriers at the rim. The edge is unfenced crumbling shale in places — keep well back, and keep children close.
• Sunrise and sunset are the whole point. Between about 10am and 4pm the light is flat and the canyon photographs poorly. Plan your rim time around the ends of the day.
• The hiking trail requires a permit and a medical certificate, a minimum party of three, and is only open roughly May to mid-September. It is not a casual undertaking.