Windhoek

Windhoek sits in a bowl of dry hills at 1,650 meters, a tidy, sunlit capital in one of the emptiest countries on Earth — Namibia holds three people per square kilometer, and the city feels like the veranda from which a nation contemplates its magnificent void. German colonial gables and the gingerbread Christuskirche share the skyline with independence monuments; Oshiwambo, Afrikaans, German and English share the sidewalk conversations.

The traveller does the compact center — church, museum, the craft market's leatherwork and karakul weavings —; then takes the city's true communion at Katutura's Single Quarters, where kapana beef sizzles on open grills and is eaten standing, with chili salt, among neighbors; toasts with the lager that carries the city's name across the continent; and watches for oryx — the heraldic antelope is on the coat of arms and, on the city's edges, occasionally on the road.

The Guide's practical counsel: Windhoek is the calm, well-organized staging post of southern Africa — bank, provision, sleep well —; distances beyond are honest deserts, so rent high clearance, carry water and respect gravel-road sunsets; the night sky improves with every kilometer out of town until, at Sossusvlei or the NamibRand, it becomes one of the planet's darkest and most decorated; and Etosha's waterholes north and the dunes west mean the capital is where Namibia begins, never where it ends.