Eight days in Namibia: the oldest desert on earth, then a German seaside town

The Lutheran church of 1910, in a pinkish sandstone with a green spire, standing on a traffic island above the city. The stained glass was a personal gift from Kaiser Wilhelm II. Small inside, and the most photographed building in Namibia.

The National Assembly meets in a low colonial administration building of 1913 that everybody calls the ink palace, from the amount of paperwork the Germans generated in it. The gardens are open, there are statues of independence leaders, and the whole thing takes twenty minutes.

Several hundred seats under thatch, crammed with number plates, lanterns and old signs, and full every night of the week. Game meat is the thing: oryx, kudu, springbok and zebra, grilled hard. Book in high season.

A reservoir on the eastern edge of the city with paths around it, good birding and a steady traffic of runners and dogs at first light. Free, and the security presence is daytime only, so go early rather than late.

A vast marble amphitheatre on a hillside ten kilometres south, with an obelisk, an eternal flame and a bronze of the unknown soldier who looks a great deal like Sam Nujoma. Opened in 2002 and built by the North Korean studio that has made monuments across Africa, which the aesthetic makes obvious. Almost nobody is ever there.

In the city centre, and a good deal more interesting than a hotel lunch: dishes from across the continent, oryx, couscous and a Cameroonian curry, with a cafe upstairs.

Forty square kilometres of rolling savannah twenty minutes west of the city, with giraffe, oryx, kudu, ostrich and no predators, which is why you may walk the trails. Two marked hikes, a pool and a viewpoint over the hills. Go for the last three hours of light.

The gate settlement: a filling station, a campsite, a small shop and the office where you buy the park permit for tomorrow. Do it today. There is nothing else here, which is part of the appeal.

A narrow gorge cut thirty metres into the plain by the Tsauchab, and you climb down into it and walk the dry riverbed between the walls. The Afrikaans name means six thongs, for the number of ox-wagon straps that had to be knotted together to reach water at the bottom. An hour, best in the last of the light.

There is nowhere to eat out here, so you eat where you sleep. Ask what time the inner gate opens tomorrow: staying inside the park boundary gets you through an hour earlier than everyone camped outside it.

A 170 m star dune forty five kilometres inside the gate, named for the kilometre marker rather than anything grander. It is the one everybody climbs at dawn because it is close enough to the road to reach in the dark and steep enough to be worth it. Take the ridge and stop when your legs say so.

A white clay pan surrounded by the highest dunes in the field, with the black skeletons of camelthorn trees still standing on it several hundred years after the river stopped reaching them. It is a fifteen minute walk in soft sand from the car park and it is the image of Namibia. Go before nine.

The clay pan the road is named for, a few hundred metres from the dead one and quite different: bigger, flatter, and green with camelthorn that still gets water in a good year. After heavy rain it floods, which happens perhaps twice a decade and is worth rearranging a trip for.

Out of the park by late morning, lunch and a swimming pool through the worst of the afternoon, and back out on the plain for sunset. Nobody does anything useful here between eleven and three.

Three hundred metres of pier over the surf. The first one was wooden and went up in 1905, the concrete replacement was still unfinished when the First World War stopped the work, and it was restored in 2005. The sun goes down off the end of it and the whole town is there to watch.

An actual tug boat, hauled onto the beach beside the jetty and converted into the best seafood restaurant on this coast. Kabeljou, kingklip, oysters from the lagoon down the road. Reservations essential, and it is worth the extra.

The largest private museum in the country, started in 1951, by the lighthouse at the end of the seafront. Two hours, very cheap, and the best single explanation of this coast you will find.

The Woermann shipping company's colonial headquarters of 1905, half-timbered and the colour of the dunes, with an arcaded courtyard and a 25 m tower that watched for ships and for ox wagons coming in off the desert. A national monument, and now a gallery and library.

The German cafe everybody ends up in. Enormous breakfasts, and a Black Forest gateau with a reputation that reaches Windhoek. Mid afternoon, with the fog usually gone by then.

Red and white striped, twenty five metres tall, and standing in a small garden in the middle of town rather than out on a headland, which tells you exactly how little harbour there is here. You cannot climb it. You will photograph it anyway.

A small municipal museum on the archaeology of the Namib, the whaling and guano trade that named the place, and the minerals of the region. An hour, and better orientation than the town's appearance suggests.

A bistro with a beer garden, pizzas and vegetables, which after a week of grilled game is more welcome than it sounds. The easiest lunch in Walvis Bay.

Back in Swakopmund on the seafront, small and well done, with a walk-through tunnel of rays, turtles and the ragged-tooth sharks of this coast. Time it for the diver feed at 15:00.

A beach bar south of the aquarium, reached by walking down the sand, and the standard place to end a day here. Cold, windy, and the sunsets on this coast are worth the jacket.

Built by the German congregation in 1912, with a stepped gable and a spire, and still holding services in German. Best from the outside, for the sheer improbability of it against a desert sky.

A road locomotive imported in 1896 to haul freight up from the coast and replace ox wagons. It broke down before it had even finished the journey from Walvis Bay, was abandoned where it stopped, and was nicknamed after Luther's line about being able to do no other. It has not moved since.

Fill up in town. There is a filling station at Usakos and not a great deal in between, and the crosswind on the open plain pushes a high vehicle around more than you expect.