Wilderness Hoanib Skeleton Coast Camp

Tullamore's brothers and a hyena called Stevie

At sunrise one morning in 2015, the year after this camp opened, the photographer Susan Portnoy was driven out of it. Twenty minutes later she was looking at five young male lions near the bank of the dry Hoanib. The guides had an idea where to look because Flip Stander, who bases his desert lion work here, passes on what the collars tell him. The five were the Musketeers, the brothers in the film Vanishing Kings: Lions of the Namib.

Five brothers, gone in two years

In the middle of 2016 one of them, Harry, was shot near Tomakas, a settlement about halfway between Sesfontein and Purros. In August 2016 Ben, Polla and Adolf fed on a donkey carcass that had been laced with poison at the same place. The bodies were burnt, collars and all. The last brother, Tullamore (Xpl-93), was darted and moved south to the Uniab Delta. In April 2017 Stander reported him missing. He had been poisoned in the Okongue area with a lioness and two cubs.

John Weir, a mammal watcher who came in July 2018 because of that film, had been warned a sighting was possible, not probable. He got lucky on his first drive: Xpl-69, a ten year old lioness the guides call Auntie, asleep beside what was left of an oryx near camp, with a thin two year old called Charlie next to her.

Giraffe every time, lion if the collars are close

Expert Africa publishes what its travellers report seeing. When I checked in October 2026 the tally since mid-2018 had every one of them seeing giraffe and oryx, 94 per cent elephant and 85 per cent lion. Brown hyena stood at 40 per cent, and nobody had recorded a rhino or a leopard. That lion figure owes a lot to the collars, and the year after the Musketeers died Weir heard of very few sightings. Call it a good chance and never a promise.

Weir kept meeting a breeding herd of ten elephants in the riverbed, and a blogger who came that October was introduced to “the ten”, “the six” and two bulls called Oliver and Arnold. A cow known as Kinky Tail, annoyed by a francolin in a bush, chased Weir’s vehicle 200 yards down the river. His guide had never seen it happen.

Two little brown things in a hole

In 2008 staff out walking from the old Hoanib tented camp reported “two little brown things” running into a hole. Emsie Verwey, the relief manager, had been helping Stander with logistics. He lent her a camera trap and it showed a brown hyena den with two cubs. Based here full time since 2014, she follows three clans. The breeding female on the river was Joey until she died in March 2015. Her successor, Stevie, had a first litter that November and was on her fourth by 2020.

The river clan covers about 2,000 square kilometres and the one at Möwe Bay only 500. The coast animals live mainly on seals and, in the cooler air there, forage by day as well as by night. Verwey had put in nearly 800 hours of watching before she saw a female mate, at Möwe Bay.

Half past five in the riverbed

The coast day starts in the dark. Weir was in the river at 05:30 with giraffe lying up under the taller trees, and later the party found lion spoor perhaps twenty minutes old and gave up following it on foot as too dangerous. When the Hoanib floods the drive is off and guests are flown both ways.

Fog drips off the tent canopy at dawn and jackals call through camp at night, the same blogger wrote. Weir’s verdict is the honest one: “not a wildlife rich area”, and he loved it anyway.