Report from Namibia and the 2013 Adventure Travel World Summit

07 Nov Report from Namibia and the 2013 Adventure Travel World Summit

I have just returned from Namibia, the Africa that I never knew existed, where I attended the 2013 Adventure Travel World Summit (ATWS). This 10th gathering of the ATWS was a mosh pit of ideas and creative energy emanating from tour operators, destination specialists, journalists, and others in the world of adventure travel.

Choosing Nambia was a stroke of genius. Located on the southwest coast of the continent, Namibia has the oldest desert in the world and a harsh Atlantic coastline where the waters of the Benguela Current push chilly seas up from Antarctica. It is one of the driest places in the world, a mélange of sand and stone and beating sun, and it defies your imagined version of Africa.

Namibia is a place where “middle of nowhere” takes on fresh meaning, a country twice the size of Germany with a population of about two million people. Emptiness and endless horizons are its stock in trade. In the north are safaris to see elephants and lions. In the south, where I traveled, it’s desert in all its endless variety, where kudu and springbok and zebra roam. In Swakopmund, where the ATWS was held, the wide empty streets have churches with onion domes, bars that pour Weissbier and streets named for prominent Germans, who colonized it briefly over a century ago, when it was German Southwest Africa. Yet you can also order oryx served with monkey gland sauce at dinner and look down the town’s empty streets lined with Lego-like buildings and see a massive wall of sand a mile away, a wilderness at the doorstep of order.

There were plenty of ideas to take away from this gathering of the adventure tribe – visionaries like Zita Cobb of the Fogo Island Inn and Tim Cahill, a founding editor of Outside, were among the speakers. But the most concise thoughts seemed to flow from the celebrated travel writer Pico Iyer. In a country where saving the rhino is paramount, a place where poachers have been transformed into protectors, Iyer summed up our mission by saying that “Just as humanity needs to preserve the wild, it’s the wild that preserves our humanity.”

The following two tabs change content below.

• Bio
• Latest Posts

Everett Potter

Everett Potter is the editor and publisher of Everett Potter’s Travel Report, an online magazine that The Wall Street Journal has called “a terrific mix of profiles and interviews, all designed to make the best use of your travel budget.”

Latest posts by Everett Potter (see all)

• Tarangire: The Essence of Tanzania - April 1, 2015
• The New Salt Lake City - November 25, 2013
• Report from Namibia and the 2013 Adventure Travel World Summit - November 7, 2013