Ai-Ais Hot Springs

|Ai-|Ais Hot Springs National Park was created in 1969 in southern Namibia and protects some 4,610 km² around the Fish River Canyon. Its name means burning water in the Nama language, a reference to the hot springs that rise at the southern end of the canyon, used since ancient times and today served by a spa.

The Fish River Canyon is the formation that defines the park: some 160 kilometres long, up to 27 wide and more than five hundred metres deep, which usually places it as the second largest canyon in the world after the Colorado and the largest in Africa. It was formed by a combination of tectonic fracture and river erosion over hundreds of millions of years, and its walls expose a very ancient geological sequence.

The river carries water only during the brief rainy season and for the rest of the year is reduced to a chain of permanent pools on the canyon floor. The walk through the canyon, some eighty-five kilometres long, is one of the most demanding and best known routes in southern Africa and is permitted only in the cool months. In 2003 the park joined South Africa's Richtersveld National Park to form the |Ai-|Ais/Richtersveld Transfrontier Park, one of the first of its kind in southern Africa.