Goanikontes Oasis

Goanikontes Restaurant sits inside the original farmhouse of a working rest camp on the D1991, in the Swakop River valley where the Namib-Naukluft Park and Dorob National Park meet on either side of the road. The building dates to 1903, and the veranda where you eat looks out across the same rocky valley the farm's first owner would have seen. The drive from Swakopmund takes around thirty minutes; from Walvis Bay, around fifty.

The kitchen serves breakfast and lunch. Coffee is a fixture — strong, and the kind of thing the farmhouse has been producing for most of its existence. The restaurant also handles group functions, from corporate lunches to weddings, using the coffee garden as an outdoor setting.

The rest camp around the restaurant gives some context for the stop. The Swakop River runs through the property — dry on the surface for most of the year, but carrying enough subsurface water to sustain the trees that shade the site. Welwitschia plants, which can live for more than a thousand years, grow in the surrounding landscape. The mountains that rise around the valley have marked footpaths, and the camp keeps a list of recommended trails for hikers and mountain bikers arriving as day visitors.

Credit cards are accepted on site. The property operates on solar power.