Holden on how he planned his trip to Namibia and what he'd have done differently

Namibia is a strange and beautiful country. Strange because past colonies have left an incongruously German footprint in the sandy, dusty landscape of southwest Africa, and beautiful in so many different ways.

The vastness of the sky, the emptiness of the land, the glory of the sunsets, the endless rocks and sand and mountains.

Most of its beauty is of the stark and imposing kind, but there are softer landscapes too, with rolling hills and grassy plains. A single road will stretch out across black rock, white sand and red earth, unfolding under deep blue skies that come alive with every sunset.

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On one evening, all the colours of the rainbow appeared in sequence above the western horizon as the sun bedded down for the night.

This was my second visit to Namibia after a gap of ten years, and I went with high expectations. They were thoroughly exceeded, and by the end of the trip I had realised that the area that had left such an impression on my first trip was in fact one of the country's less impressive regions. This time around I saw much more.

Days 1 and 2: Keetmanshoop

I landed at lunchtime, met my travelling companion and set off on the main road south to Keetmanshoop. By Namibian standards this is not an interesting road, but we were not yet used to Namibian standards. After cruising through Windhoek, the quiet, town-like capital city that houses about a quarter of the country's two million people, we were on the open road.

This is one of southern Africa's major routes, bisecting Namibia and linking Cape Town with Victoria Falls and Luanda, but the traffic is light and the 300-mile journey passed quickly. We paused en route to admire our first Namibian sunset, and then drove on as the sky continued its performance. To the west, the yellows and oranges deepened and darkened, while the eastern sky mellowed into purples and blues, then faded to black.

Day two was a good introduction to the country’s landscape, history and plant life – and to the informal nature of tourism in this part of the world. Our first stop was at the Mesosaurus Trail, where we arrived to find Gill, the proprietor, sitting on his porch and waiting for visitors.

After introducing us to his dogs, Gill told us that 19 years ago, while he was building a road across his land, he split open a rock and found a large, well-preserved fossil. Archaeologists eventually told him that it was a mesosaurus, a metre-long reptilian dinosaur that lived 280 million years ago in South America and the southern tip of Africa. Fossils like these have provided some of the best evidence that the continents of the southern hemisphere were once joined.

Gill now runs a small guesthouse and offers tours to people who drop in unannounced, like us. Looking sceptically at our 2WD hire car, he invited us into his pick-up for the drive up to the fossil site. There, he talked us through the story of his find, pointed out German war graves from the colonial era and showed off the fossils that he and his son had found. Some are startlingly well preserved, revealing fine details such as broken leg bones and claws.

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