Camp 911 Namibia

Five nights in the Namib desert, guided, driving a Porsche 911 Dakar off-road, with the price quoted on application.

The 911 Dakar is a raised, long-travel 911 built for exactly this, and Namibia is the right place to find out what it will do: open gravel, dry riverbeds, deep sand and the Atlantic dunes, with nobody else on any of it.

Walvis Bay airport opens it, with a transfer to Camp 911, a purpose-built desert camp in the Namib-Naukluft National Park in the area known as the Moon Landscape, which the operator notes was used in the filming of 2001: A Space Odyssey. A briefing, a sundowner and a braai follow, with skywatching under some of the darkest skies anywhere. The first driving day is five hours off-road, with Welwitschia plants along the way, a living fossil that can reach fifteen hundred years, lunch at the Tinkas Plains oasis and the Blutkuppe inselberg, then a light aircraft flight over the Namib Sand Sea and dinner in Swakopmund. The second takes on the coastal dunes, with grilled seafood and crayfish, and a game drive closes the trip.

The 911 Dakar is provided for all the driving days; the full inclusions were not itemised on the operator’s page and are worth confirming at booking. The price is given on application. The cooler months from May to September suit the desert best, since the Namib in high summer is punishing even with air conditioning. No wildlife sighting can be promised on the game drive. Six days with a purpose-built camp at the centre of it is as far from a circuit day as Porsche driving gets, and the car is the only real reason it works.