, Updated 16 Feb 2021, 15:23 GMT
Shipwreck Lodge offers 10 eco-cabins designed to look like washed-ashore boats, Skeleton Coast.
Photograph by SHAWN VAN EEDEN
Just metres away, a week-old lion cub creeps out from the shade and looks me straight in the eye. Above him, red rock stretches into a cyan sky; below him, the dusty expanse of the Hoanib riverbed. He inches out further before his mother uncurls from her afternoon siesta and plucks him up with her mouth and returns to their cave.
In a normal safari, a sighting of a pride of just-born, desert-adapted lion cubs would be the highlight of the day. And yet, I’m distracted. For the first time on my trip to Namibia, wildlife isn’t the main draw; around me is a landscape so magnificent that it demands my almost undivided attention.