The Skeleton Coast

We left Damaraland Camp early to spend as much time as possible along the coast, despite having a 450-kilometer drive over gravel and sand to Swakopmund. We reached the gates by midmorning and, after the customary paperwork, were waved through without fee by the gatekeeper--who added warm congratulations on the news we were about to get married in Namibia.

A jokey attitude about the infamous name is quite noticeable--from these Jolly Roger gates to the skull-emblazoned Skeleton Coast t-shirts we would later spot on sale in Swakopmund.

But for us, the coast was sheer beauty, and not morbid at all.

Although, there are skeletons here, and not just those of the numerous ships wrecked by the coast's savage shoals, offshore winds, and dense fogs. One notable set of metal bones we stopped to visit was this ruined oil derrick, the remains of someone's scheme to get rich off the desert thirty years ago.

Even here there is rich life, including these almost-white flamingos browsing in a tidal harbor.

Nearby, a small group of cormorants kept to a sandbar, a safe distance from the hyenas whose tracks (and even bones, see below) were all around their roosting grounds.

One of the smaller shipwrecks along the coast, this wooden fishing vessel is eroding out of the sands, ribs first.

And another type of skeleton entirely . . . .



Whether oil rigs, boats, or hyena bones, all the remains pointed the memento mori that this crazy, soulful place where the world's oldest desert rubs up against a cold and stormy ocean, generating the huge fogs that roll over the dunes, is not a place to be trifled with by any creature.