The eerie lunar nothingness of Namibia’s Skeleton Coast

We had pushed 4 hours and had not but seen one other soul. No individuals. No automobiles. Simply an eerie moon-void stretching south to the horizon. left desert; proper ocean. A dense salt highway sewed a decent seam between the 2. Below a cloudy sky, the three surfaces light right into a single, indistinguishable smudge of grey-brown.

We traveled alongside Namibia’s Skeleton Coast, a area also known as the top of the world.

Given the view via the dusty windshield, the title felt acceptable. The untamed Skeleton Coast begins on Namibia’s northern border with Angola and continues 300 miles south to the previous German colonial city of Swakopmund, the place strudel-filled bakeries and beer gardens nonetheless line the streets – and the place, a century in the past, hundreds of Africans from two ethnic teams lived, the Herero and the Nama had been killed by German troopers.

The area accommodates a mixture of cultures, landscapes and species not like wherever else on Earth, at instances paying homage to a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

My associate and I drove the C34 freeway alongside this distant, treacherous stretch of land halfway via a 3 week highway journey via Namibia in early 2021. A 12 months earlier we had packed up our lives and left our dwelling and work in Seattle with plans to journey the world, solely to be abruptly halted by the worldwide shutdown simply weeks into our journey. What turned out to be maybe one of the distinctive pandemic experiences ended with us being locked down in our first vacation spot, Portugal, for seven months.

As issues slowly opened up once more in late 2020, we determined to cautiously start to rethink our unique itinerary. Then there have been a couple of key inquiries to reply: Which nations are at the moment admitting US residents? (Only a few.) Primarily based on present Covid-19 case numbers, testing and masking necessities, the place have we felt protected? (Even much less.) And above all, the place would we not burden the nation’s healthcare system if we did get sick?

Namibia shortly rose to the highest of the record. Among the many most sparsely populated nations on the planet and a spot the place we might journey utterly independently, it appeared like a good selection. Little did we all know how awestruck we’d be by the huge and assorted landscapes.

I knew little concerning the nation earlier than we focused it and instantly set about researching its historical past and geography. The second I discovered concerning the Skeleton Coast and skim tales of Twentieth-century shipwrecks, rugged panoramas and diamond rushes, I felt the pull of it. The wildness, the desolation, the inaccessible thriller of all of it – it lit my creativeness and I knew I needed to expertise it and {photograph} it.

The gates via which we entered Skeleton Coast Nationwide Park close to the Ugab River had been guarded by two skulls and crossbones with towering whale ribs. The gadgets served as a warning: “Quit hope, all who enter.”

Earlier than crossing the 6,300-square-mile protected coastal space, we needed to give our names and knowledge — lest we make it earlier than darkish — in change for a transit allow and a wholesome dose of apprehension. We crossed our fingers and held our breath as we drove via the gates, praying we would not blow out a tire on the tented Toyota Hilux rental that had been our dwelling for the previous few weeks or get eaten by seaside lions no man’s land forward.

This arid desert that empties into lifeless Atlantic waves has introduced premature deaths to many unlucky sailors, ships, planes and animals. Their carcasses—rusting vessels, sun-bleached bones—are seen reminders in the present day of the park’s hostile situations. It is an inhospitable place the place nearly nothing grows and the place risks abound, from raging waves to thick coastal fog.

Guests are sometimes drawn to the park’s shoreline, which is affected by shipwrecks. Although few stay seen, tons of of ships have met their destiny alongside this shoreline, slowly being swallowed up by the weather. Some are solely accessible by airplane or four-wheel drive.

Traces of the Dunedin Star stay within the far north. The British Blue Star liner sank ashore in 1942 and ran aground with 106 passengers and crew. An plane and a tugboat, together with a number of crew members, had been additionally misplaced within the rescue effort. To the south, the cargo ship Eduard Bohlen ran aground in 1909 and may now be seen from above 1 / 4 mile inland as a ghost ship surrounded by desert.

We might see the stays of the South West Seal, a ship that crashed ashore in 1976, now only a scattering of timber and rusted steel peeping out of the sand, and the Zeila, a fishing trawler, misplaced close to Henties Bay in 2008 was stranded. That continues to be a deteriorating however nonetheless largely intact and visual presence that’s now dwelling to dozens of black cormorants offshore.

The few man-made traces listed below are all in a state of decay: avenue indicators are light and crumbling, an deserted oil rig is little greater than a pile of rust eaten away by time, sand and sea air. I ended each couple of minutes to seize these particulars with my digicam, stretching a six-hour drive into an 11-hour drive.

Alongside the highway we handed different curiosities together with the Cape Cross Seal Reserve, dwelling to over 200,000 foul-smelling fur seals, and the Walvis Bay Salt Works, the place huge salt pans are coloured vivid pink by the presence of Dunaliella salina microorganisms. Matching flamingos stalked shrimp within the close by wetlands. Makeshift tables lined the highway north of Swakopmund; Atop them rested dozens of vivid pink halite salt crystals, typically accompanied by rusty piggy banks, ready for sincere passers-by to go away a couple of {dollars} in change for treasure.

The barren panorama felt otherworldly, harsh and highly effective. Each exhilarating and terrifying. The coast and colours slowly modified, the sand reddened as we continued south and entered the Namib-Naukluft Nationwide Park, dwelling to the oldest desert on the planet: the Namib.

The Namib, the younger nation’s namesake (Namibia gained independence in 1990), has existed for no less than 55 million years, and its towering dunes have tumbled into the turbulent sea for eons.

The solitude and seclusion we had been chasing after visiting this desolate a part of the world – escaping human-borne ailments, sure, but in addition the drudgery of our day by day lives – awaited us in abundance. Namibia made us really feel small and insignificant – a perspective I typically crave in a world overwhelmed with immediate gratification and countless struggles for my consideration. And in the long run, the Skeleton Coast was a bizarre and delightful reminder that we people are powerless in opposition to time and that in a warfare between people and nature, nature at all times wins.