Things to do in Windhoek

Landmark · Central Windhoek

A 1907 German Lutheran church in local sandstone, with the 2014 Independence Memorial Museum standing over it.

Local tip: The two together are the point: a colonial church, and beside it a museum built with North Korean assistance that tells the liberation story in explicit terms. The museum's top-floor restaurant has the best view over central Windhoek.

Food · North-west Windhoek

The township created by forced removals in the 1960s, and its open-air meat market where kapana is grilled and sold by the strip.

Local tip: Go at lunchtime, buy from a griller with a queue, and eat it standing up with the chilli-salt mix they hand you. Township tours exist; going with someone who lives there is better than any of them.

Nature · 20 km west of the city

A small reserve in the Khomas Hochland hills with zebra, oryx, kudu and hiking trails, half an hour from the office.

Local tip: There are no big predators, which means you can walk the trails on foot unaccompanied — rare in southern Africa. The three-hour Rooibos trail at dawn is the best morning available this close to a capital city.

Culture · Old Breweries Building, central

A permanent hall of small producers — Kavango baskets, Himba jewellery, Nama needlework, San craft — selling directly.

Local tip: It is a genuine cooperative rather than a souvenir shop, and the provenance labels are accurate. The café upstairs is the informal meeting point for the city's NGO and conservation crowd.

Landmark · 10 km south on the Rehoboth road

The national memorial to the liberation struggle, on a hillside with an obelisk and a marble mausoleum.

Local tip: Enormous, formal and almost empty most days. Whatever you make of the monumental style, standing at the top and looking north over the plain toward Windhoek is the clearest sense you will get of the country's scale.

Landmark · North-west Windhoek

The world's first plant to turn municipal sewage directly into drinking water, running since 1968.

Local tip: Not a tourist attraction and visits need to be arranged, but knowing it exists changes how you understand the city. Windhoek has been drinking reclaimed water for well over half a century, long before anywhere else tried it, because there was no alternative. Ask a local about it and you will get a proud answer.