Within a thirty-minute drive of downtown, accommodation at Daan Viljoen Game Park offers a viable alternative.
Other areas offering generally less expensive lodgings include Windhoek West, just west of the city centre, and within walking distance of Independence Avenue, and Pioneers Park – good also for self-catering options, a fifteen-minute drive on the main road south, next to the University of Namibia and close to a shopping centre. Most of the higher-end guesthouses, smaller hotels and restaurants are situated in the leafy eastern suburbs of Klein Windhoek, Ludwigsdorf and Eros Park, though they’re little more than a ten-minute drive into the centre of town. Guesthouses form the bulk of the properties, with many places only having a handful of rooms, so it pays to book well in advance. There is plenty of comfortable accommodation in Windhoek, from inexpensive backpackers hostels to family-run guesthouses, self-catering chalets and modern hotels. Besides, Windhoek’s comfortable guesthouses and a handful of pleasant alfresco dining options make it an agreeable environment to spend a couple of days getting your bearings at the start of a trip – as well as stocking up on supplies – or unwinding at the end of a hectic safari. Windhoek is somewhat short on sights beyond a few modest museums however, a wander around the National Botanical Gardens in the suburbs and a day’s outing beyond Windhoek to the attractive surroundings of Daan Viljoen Game Park – Namibia’s smallest reserve – will whet your appetite for some of the extraordinary landscapes and wildlife that await. Yet this is a city striving for modernity, keen to shrug off its small-town image and colonial past: new high-rise buildings now pierce the CBD skyline, and the brash multi-million-dollar post-independence constructions, such as the new State House and Heroes’ Acre, dominate the surrounding hillsides.
Its tidy, clean pavements, dotted with German colonial architecture, lack the frenetic and chaotic pace and horn-honking mayhem more readily associated with African capital cities. Strolling down Independence Avenue, Windhoek city centre’s tree-lined main boulevard, it’s easy to feel you’re in a provincial town in northern Europe.
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