Hailed as a conservation success story, Namibia takes its name from what’s believed to be the world’s oldest, and certainly one of its most impressively deserty deserts. Along with its magnificently adapted rhinos, lions, and elephants, and the austerely haunting Skeleton Coast, where uncompromising desert flows directly into equally indomitable ocean, Namibia is famed for its sand dunes, the highest in the world. A number of giants vie for top spot, but the sandy monarch of all is probably Big Daddy, which, at 1264 feet is 28 Shaquille O’Neals higher than the Chrysler Building.
It’s true of all of Africa’s great gamelands, but Namibia may be the ultimate place to contemplate Isak Dinesen’s insight that “there is a morally edifying quality in the very aspect of an elephant–on seeing four elephants walking together on the plain, I at once felt that I had been shown black stone sculptures of the four major Prophets.”


Southern Africa, Namibia
The Namib Desert’s elegantly shaped dunes are the world’s highest, rising like sandy tsunamis over stark, thought-provoking landscapes, under deep cerulean skies.