Namibia with kids? Yes please, a thousand times over! We had high expectations for our trip to Namibia with the kids, and this country blew us away! Namibia ticks a lot of the boxes we look for in family travel – off the beaten track and adventure! And when we stumbled across cheap flights in May 2025, we booked for April 2026! Our two weeks in Namibia with the kids was some of the best family travel we have done!
Here’s your practical guide to visiting Namibia as a family. It’s full of hints and tips for visiting Namibia with kids.
Getting to Namibia
From the UK, there are no direct flights. In fact, there are only direct flights to Windhoek, the capital, from Johannesburg, Cape Town, Munich, Frankfurt and Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.
The flights we found were from Manchester via Ethiopia with Ethiopian airlines. We unbelievably paid £417 per person for our flights over the easter holidays, with the kids missing the last 2 days of school to maximise our time and drop the price a little. Average flight prices I have seen are around £700-£800 per person.
Transiting via Ethiopia was ok. Worth nothing that if travelling with kids you can use the fast track for security (including transit security) and this saves you joining a huge queue! Ethiopian Airlines scored a 6/10 for us. It wasn’t the service or quality from Emirates – everything was just ok, nothing out of this world, but for the price we paid, it did the job! Although very random, we did stop at Marseille and Geneva on the way out and back respectively: an hour on the ground to let off passengers so that does add to the total travel time (we did not get off!)
Getting around Namibia with kids
There is no public transport within Nambia so you have two options! Self-drive, or go with a fully organised tour where everything is taken care of. We opted for the self-drive option as it was considerably cheaper, and gave us the flexibility we wanted.
We hired a 4×4 truck with 2 roof tents from Travel Namibia 4×4. This rental included pick up and drop off at Windhoek airport, and all our camping gear. We paid £1900 for 16 days with all insurance included (so no excess or deposit to pay, and also tyre and windscreen damage!) – usually we don’t both with the insurance but the roads in Namibia are bad so this gave us complete peace of mind.
There’s your complete guide to driving and camping in Namibia, which you can read here….
Arriving in Namibia with kids
UK passport holders require a visa for Namibia – you can either apply online in advance or on arrival, the latter being slightly more expensive. The queues at the airport for each option were very similar so one won’t get you through faster. We waited for just over an hour to get through immigration, and this was with being sat near the front of the plane.
You need to have your e-visa printed out, original printed birth certificates for the kids, proof of funds, and your addresses in Namibia. The e-visa application for Namibia was relatively straight forward, although you have to do one family member at a time, and was approved within minutes. You can apply for your visa for Namibia up to 30 days before arrival.
After immigration, is the baggage hall where all the bags had been taken off the belts and left on the floor, so it was a search and find process! But all our bags and car seat arrived! Total time from landing to getting out the airport was over 2 hours – the kids had definitely had enough!
Data and sim cards in Namibia
E-Sims don’t work! So, you need a local sim card. The provider for Namibia is MTC. There is an MTC kiosk in the baggage hall and we recommend using this over the office outside after customs which is also visited by Namibians and not just tourists – the queues there were long there.
20gb of data for 30 days cost us £40. 10gb for 14 days was £20. We recommend getting 2 sim cards / two phones as we ran out of data and you have to go to a MTC shop to top it up. I can’t explain how long this process was – the queues were over an hour! So, get more than you need! But it worked well generally. I’d also recommend downloading Namibia in google maps, and music playlists before leaving the UK so you aren’t draining data there. Often the wifi also wasn’t great, so we relied on our sim cards a lot!
Budget and costs in Namibia
There are ATMs at most petrol stations and all main towns. But card payments are also accepted in most places. If your accommodation or tour doesn’t accept card payments, they will tell you in advance. South African Rand are also accepted on a 1:1 basis, but we never had an issue either finding an ATM or using our card to pay. ATMs charge just over £2 to withdraw cash and the maximum withdrawal is £150 / $3000 NAD per transaction. At the time of writing we were working off $20NAD = 1GBP
I’ll do a full budget breakdown of our specific trip, but here’s an idea of what costs are in Namibia for day-to-day spending.
- Large beer: £1- £3
- Main meal: £5 – £6
- Meal for 2 adults, 2 kids including drinks: £35
- Groceries – very similar to the UK
- Game drive: £25-40 per adult, kids are usually half price
- Petrol / diesel: £1.10 per litre
- Campsites with private facilities and a pool: £50-£70 per night
Generally, for accommodation and trips, kids age 7-12 pay half price of an adult. Under 6s are free, and over 12s are adult prices. There were a few exceptions to this, but it’s a good rule of thumb to consider. It’s worth asking whether you can put sleeper beds in a room rather than having to pay for 2 rooms – we did this at Sophienhof Lodge!
Tipping in Namibia
It’s a good idea to carry some small notes with you, in $10, $20, $50 and $100 NAD. We generally tipped as follows:
- ‘watchman / security’ in a car park – $10 or $20 (pay them as you leave to encourage them to watch it, although we never really felt it was unsafe
- Tour guide / game driver – $100 for the 4 of us
- In a restaurant – $50 – $100
- Petrol station attendants – $20 (they wash your windows and fill up the tank, you don’t even need to get out the car!)
It’s not expected, but it is very much appreciated. And every guide we had was simply amazing with the kids and so passionate about their country and their work.
2-week Namibia roadtrip itinerary
Namibia is a huge country. Distances are long and unless you have 4-6 weeks you won’t see it all. So, there will be compromise. If you are exploring Namibia with kids, you will also need to slow down. They don’t want to be in the car every day for 3-6 hours! And if camping in Namibia then factor in the time it takes to erect and dismantle the roof tents and be packing and unpacking the car!
Our full 2-week itinerary is available on this blog, but the highlights for us were Sossusvlei, Deadvlei, Swakopmund, Damaraland, Outjo and Etosha.
We chose to finish with the wildlife to keep the excitement until the end! The other areas we had eyed up but decided it was just too much driving were Fish Eye Canyon, Spitzkoppe and the Caprivi Strip – I’m confident we will be returning!
Packing for a trip to Namibia with kids
We went all out fully prepared and didn’t need some of the gear we had packed. For our camping road trip to Namibia in April I had read that it can be cold on a night, so I had even packed thermal PJs and woolly hats – these just stayed in their vacuum bags throughout our whole trip.
One piece of advice for renting a 4×4 and roof tents in Namibia is to take soft bags rather than hard shelled suitcases – you’ll find them easier to squeeze into the various available space! We fit in 2 large holdalls and 2 smaller rucksacks no issue, even with room to spare. Our day bags went at the kids feet. You wouldn’t however fit in 4 large suitcases without playing a lot of tetris!
Here’s a short guide on what we took to Namibia as a family of 4.
Clothes for Namibia
Take old clothes – you will get dirty and dusty. We packed 2 nicer outfits each for the few lodges we stayed in, but this wasn’t necessary and we only ‘dressed up’ 1 night!
Shorts are definitely better over dresses – you’ll be scrambling on the roof of the truck, climbing the ladder to the roof tents and hiking. We wore shorts and vests most days, with the only place needing trousers and a t-shirt being Swakopmund which is 10 degrees cooler than the other places we visited, and hovered around 20-22degrees.
We all had one jumper which we travelled in and barely used again – except in Swakopmund and on our night drive. Shoes-wise we all had hiking sandals and a pair of trainers and again this was sufficient.
Apart from our apartment in Swakopmund we didn’t have access to a washing machine or laundry, so take plenty of undies or be prepared to do some handwashing!
Here’s our recommended packing list per person:
- 3-4 shorts
- 6-7 tops
- 2 dresses (daywear or nicer/longer for evening)
- 2 trousers
- 2 long sleeve tops for mosquito protection / cooler evening
- 1 bigger jumper
- 2 PJs – we took a long and short pair
- Underwear for 2 whole weeks inc. 5 pairs of socks
- Hiking sandals and trainers
The ’just in case’ packing list
We had one bag which we didn’t open our whole trip. But it was fine just sat in our truck and didn’t had to be carried anywhere. We had 3 vacuum packed bags in here with thermal underwear, another with waterproof jackets and woolly hats/gloves and snoods, and a 3rd with single duvets that we were going to use as sleeping bag liners. Apparently, there are times when hats are needed and it is a lot cooler so research whether that is needed when you are visiting – it wasn’t in April!
Aside from clothes, we also had basic toiletries (although all of these are able to be bought in the supermarkets), games to play (link to some of our favourites here), cameras for everyone (even the kids loved taking their photos), foam airplanes / frizbee / outdoor games, binoculars (I wish we had a better set) and iPads / electronics / headphones / kindle / books / sticker books.
We also took far too much sunscreen – it is needed, as the UV is high, but we forgot how many hours would be spent driving or in a vehicle! And if you do run out, then the supermarkets do sell it. Mozzie spray is also needed!
Shopping in Namibia for kids
I was really surprised at the choice of food and shopping in Namibia was easy. You need to hunt out a Super Spar – every big town has at least one. They have everything you would expect to find in the UK, including those all important snacks for the kids! And the deli counters and bakeries are amazing!!!
The petrol stations also all have convenience stores for cold drinks and ice creams en route! They also have firewood and other items you may need. It’s also worth noting that the fridge in the truck was surprisingly spacious and fitted in a lot more than we expected. You can easily fit in 2-3 days worth of food and drink in here.
In Windhoek, Swakopmund and Outjo we also found loads of other shops for clothing, electronics, homeware etc. so you really can pick anything up that you may have forgotten!
Vegetarian Food in Namibia
This is something else we were pleasantly surprised by. I expected it to be a meat-fest! And whilst it was, there was always something for us veggies to eat. In the Super Spar supermarkets we even found vegan burgers, vegan sausages and other meat-free replacements. Veggies and fruit are in abundance as well. As are all the herbs and spices you would expect. When camping we enjoyed fajitas, lentil dahl, pasta and sauce, veggie burgers, and veggie sausages and eggs.
The lodges all included our evening meals and as long as you put in your vegetarian request beforehand then you will be catered for – and well! We even asked for no red-meat for Nyle and he was served something different. Although he did try Springbok and declared it as being delicious.
Safety in Namibia
Hand on heart we felt 100% safe the whole time. So if you’re wondering whether it is safe to visit Namibia with kids, then take this as your sign it is. The usual common sense applies – don’t wear / splash loads of expensive items, don’t drive at night (this is actually forbidden due to risk of hitting animals!) and if something doesn’t feel right, then move on. We didn’t feel scammed at any point, nor in any danger at all. It was a very friendly country and we were very comfortable travelling around Namibia with the kids as a same-sex family and as two females!
We hope you found this guide useful and enjoying reading all about our hints and tips from our experience of visiting Namibia with kids! And if you’ve not yet made the decision to book – we hope we’ve inspired you to do so!
