I watched the mist. It moved across the red dunes of the Namib and cloaked the dry river valleys, mountains and sandy ripples like a great white sheet. On any normal day its otherworldly beauty might have preoccupied me entirely, but with biologist Dr Hu Berry as my guide, extraordinary new dimensions suddenly unfolded. Mist is the source of life for plants and animals in the Namib and they harness its moisture in fascinating ways.

He pointed to a tok-tokkie beetle on the dune. It had its back to the mist and was waiting patiently for moisture to condense on its carapace, trickle down its legs and into its mouth. Some distance away we came across a dried-out stick of a plant. It was called a Resurrection plant and could apparently suck up the fog like blotting paper and spring to life. Far in the distance were massive oryx, weighing more than 200kg, so well adapted to this harsh land that they can survive for days with just a few sips of water.

This was my seventh visit to Namibia, but in many ways it might have been my first. Hu worked as a research scientist for 32 years, first in Etosha and then in the Namib-Naukluft National Park. For me, joining him on a desert trip was the natural history equivalent of joining Picasso for an art class.

Our tour, which was arranged by Sense of Africa, began at the Windhoek Country Club. It was not until late the following day - after a seven-hour drive - that we eventually reached Namibrand Private Nature Reserve and the dunes where tok-tokkie beetles lean into the mist. Nothing in Namibia is close together and our party soon learned to expect long days on the road.

We settled into our luxury tents (eight in total), which were strung out in the middle of the dune fields overlooking a range of mountains. At 180,000ha, the Namibrand Reserve is one of the largest privately owned parks in the world, and abuts the famous Namib-Naukluft National Park. Its rugged basalt outcrops reach more than 2000m high and its fields of dunes encompass brilliant shades of red, gold and pink. Its main camp, Wolwedans, achieves a delightful balance of wildness and comfort. At night we dined on game meat and fresh vegetables, and lay in our tents staring through mesh up at the stars.

During the day we puttered over the dunes in an open Land Rover. Louise Clapham, who'd been at Wolwedans for more than six years, was our specialist guide and had a particular interest in botany. She explained how Camelthorn trees rely on large mammals for their seed dispersal and how the smelly Shepherd's bush lures flies to pollinate its flowers by emitting the scent of dung. She also showed us varieties of Bushman grass and the clever manner in which their seeds plant themselves in the sand.

Hu had taught Louise much of what she knows. Although officially retired from the Namibian Directorate of Conservation, he's still employed as a general consultant to the government and leads desert ecology training courses for guides. He believes strongly in the powers of a true wilderness experience, so on our last evening at Wolwedans he sent us all out into the dunes to learn what it feels like to be genuinely alone in one of the least populated places on earth.

We all walked in different directions over the ridge of dunes surrounding the camp, where there were no signs of human life. I wasn't far enough away to get lost, but that didn't remove the sense of vulnerability. The only sound was the gentle tapping of my pulse in my ear. At sunset, heat leaked rapidly from the mica soils and a deadly cold gripped the desert. It reminded me just how fragile humans are when stripped of clothes and technology. Alone out here, I knew, I would not survive one night.

Our route from Namibrand took us over gravel plains towards the dry interior of the Namib-Naukluft National Park to Mirabib (a name derived from the word hirabib, meaning "place of the jackal"), where tents had been set up beneath a lone dome of granite rock. Dry and much more desert-like than Namibrand, the grass was close-cropped by antelope and only the hardiest commiphoras, stunted, bonsai-like, by lack of rain, could be seen. In the Namib, annual rainfall (which forms inland) decreases by about one millimetre every kilometre you drive towards the coast, as the cloud dissipates. We were now about 40km from the sea, close to Gobabeb where Hu had spent 12 years heading the Research Institute studying plants, animals, rainfall and other mysteries of the desert.

Also nearby was Kuiseb Canyon - or the badlands - where German geologists Henno Martin and Hermann Korn spent two and a half years escaping internment during World War II. Their story, told in Martin's book The Sheltering Desert, is a classic account of life and death in the desert.

Unlike these hardy survivors, we enjoyed cold drinks and air conditioning in the Namib and eventually arrived relaxed and well fed in the coastal town of Swakopmund. Two nights in the grand Swakopmund Hotel, the former railway station, recharged us further. We tasted sticky forest cake in Cafe Anton and beer made according to strict German standards, before whiling away an afternoon in a bird hide at Walvis Bay lagoon (a Wetland of International Importance) sipping champagne, slurping local oysters and watching flamingos.

Replete and rested, we trucked northwards, stopping at the Cape Cross seal colony and Erongo Wilderness Lodge, where we spent two restful nights in luxury tents overlooking a boulder-strewn wilderness strongly reminiscent of Zimbabwe's Matobo Hills. It's a great place to relax, with Bushman rock art, and wonderful birding and nature walks.

Hu served as warden and chief biologist for more than fifteen years at our next destination, Etosha National Park, regarded as one of the finest reserves in the world. Staff greeted him like an old friend. We met Dr Betsy Fox, who heads up Namibian Conservation's north-western region and is a desert elephant specialist; Dr Peter Turnbill, a world authority on anthrax, and Mark Berry (Hu's son), who maintains family traditions as warden of Etosha's Halali rest camp.

Hu gave us all the tips you'd expect from a local. Animals in Etosha drink mostly in the mid-morning heat and early evenings, he told us, and rather than drive around madly at these times, we should stay put at waterholes and let them come to us. It paid off. In three short hours at Okaukuejo we ticked off 50 elephant, four Black rhino, three lions and innumerable springbok and zebra. No wonder it's regarded as one of the world's best waterholes. But this tour was not about sunsets, pretty landscapes and parades of animals. Soon Hu had gone back to a more questioning, scientific mode.

"Check your watches," he said as the sun slipped over the horizon. "In fifteen-and-a-half minutes, Double-banded sandgrouse will come to drink." I caught sight of the first birds flitting through the gloom exactly 16 minutes later - just 30 seconds off the mark. The synchronisation of drinking is all about survival, Hu told us. The birds save energy and reduce water loss by flying during the cool parts of the day. They also drink at a time when most diurnal birds of prey have ceased their activity and nocturnal predators such as owls are not yet fully active.

From Etosha we headed southwards towards Windhoek once again, stopping off at the Cheetah Conservation Fund at Otjiwarongo, where Dr Berry is director of the research committee. The area has the world's largest cheetah population, and scientists and volunteers based here conduct research and educate farmers about tolerance towards their feline neighbours. It is a world-class centre with sophisticated displays and a few cats which serve as "ambassadors" for the project. It was satisfying to think that their populations are on the rise and to see them so closely. But, once again, Hu put a different spin on things.

Cheetahs do particularly well here, he told us, because they do not have to compete with lion and hyaena. As victims of a genetic bottleneck (there are too few cheetah in existence for successful evolutionary development), they have various abnormalities including a poor dental structure and cannot compete very well in national parks. "You know," he said, "it may sound a paradox but we could be denying them their natural right to extinction."

So I left Namibia with the natural world having been turned on its head. Two weeks with Dr Berry had been a real education. Sunsets would never seem quite the same again.

Best Job in the World

Now aged 62, Dr Hu Berry was born in South Africa but moved to Namibia at the age of 30 and has never left. He believes that it is one of the few places on earth where human populations are low enough to give nature a real chance.

His initial position was in the South West African administration as chief ornithologist. "I was lucky to get the job," says Hu. "When Mr de la Bat interviewed me for the position, he asked if I knew anything about birds. I said that I had once dissected a pigeon!"

Hu soon established his credentials as a scientist and in the years that followed published groundbreaking material on the behaviour and ecology of various bird species, including flamingos, pelicans and Cape cormorants. After some time he was promoted to chief biologist and warden at Etosha, where he worked for the next 15 years conducting further research on lions, wildebeest and anthrax. Together with a gynaecologist friend, he was behind an ingenious lion contraception programme using hormonal implants, in order to avoid more brutal culling practices.

Dr Berry was eventually promoted to a desk position in Windhoek. This, he claims, was the lowest point of his career and he applied for demotion. He was appointed as chief biologist in the Namib-Naukluft National Park, where he ran the Gobabeb Research Institute for the next 12 years.

Hu retired at 60, as per government regulations, but on account of his special skills and experience he has been retained as a full-time consultant. He lives in Swakopmund with his wife Cornelia, a botanist and author with whom he has two sons. He still writes management plans for Namibia's parks and training programmes for guides, and undertakes other specialist jobs. Every year, he revealed, he makes a trip up to Terrace Bay where President Nujoma has his holiday house. "My job there is to be at the disposal of the President and to give him and his entourage more information about the environment." It comes as no surprise that Dr Berry believes he has the best job in the world.

David Rogers is a freelance travel writer and photographer based in Cape Town. His tour was organised by Sense of Africa and he flew to Windhoek courtesy of Air Namibia.

Published in Travel Africa Edition Nineteen: Spring 2002. Text is subject to Worldwide Copyright (c)