You really don’t want to get a puncture on your way in to Ugab Rhino Camp. Despite the name, it’s not the rhinos you have to worry about here, but a pride of desert lions known to inhabit this spot in central Namibia. Getting a puncture means getting out of your vehicle under a hot, desert sun, working your way through changing a tyre in the middle of nowhere , knowing that there are definitely lions prowling around.
It’s not ideal. A road trip through southern Africa was the journey of a lifetime. Credit: iStock And so the road, such as it is, is causing my partner Jess and me a fair bit of stress.
It’s a dirt track strewn with sharp rocks, the sort that could tear a gash in your tyre wall with ease should you hit them at the wrong angle. There’s no one around here to call for help. There’s no one around here at all.
Eventually, we make it into the camp puncture-free and set up, before the guy running Ugab comes over and says he wants to show us something. On the site a few places over from ours, he points to the sandy ground, where there’s the perfect, dinner-plate-sized imprint of a lion’s paw. “Yesterday,” he says, smiling.
It’s probably not spoiling the ending of this story to tell you that we weren’t eaten by lions on that trip (though if you try to stay at Ugab Rhino Camp now you will see a sign posted out the front stating: “Closed because of extremely aggressive lion in the area.”) We survived our night in the Namibian desert, and went on .