Skeleton Coast

The Skeleton Coast is a drive, not a destination: the salt road up the Atlantic from Swakopmund north, through Cape Cross with its seals, past the wreck of the Zeila and through the skull gate into the national park, then east into Damaraland. A whole day, two hundred and fifty kilometres of fog and sand, and the one day on the loop when it seems nobody else is on the planet.

The name Skeleton Coast is twentieth-century, from a news report and a book about the wrecks; the older nickname is Portuguese — sailors called this coast the gates of hell. The reason is the same for both names: the cold Benguela current, fog and currents threw ships onto the sand for centuries, and the survivors found themselves between the ocean and a desert without water. Today the wrecks are seen from the road — the Zeila, a fishing boat stranded in 2008 south of Henties, stands in the waves a hundred metres offshore and is the easiest to photograph; the older ones are buried in sand or deep in the park, where you cannot go without a permit and a guide. The road is salt and gravel, flat and empty, with one fuel station at Henties in a hundred and fifty kilometres.

The first stop is Henties Bay, about an hour from Swakopmund: a salt lake by the road with flamingos, a fishing settlement with huts that stand empty half the year, and the only fuel station in a hundred and fifty kilometres. Cape Cross is half an hour further north — a seal colony of a hundred thousand and more, with a boardwalk through it, jackals waiting and a smell that does not go away; entry is paid at the gate, check the amount. From there it is another hour to the Ugabmund gate with its skulls, where the national park begins and a transit permit is paid — about eighty Namibian dollars per person plus the vehicle, and required even to pass through.

The southern part of the park may be driven without a guide only in transit, from Ugabmund to the Springbokwasser gate in the east, with a ban on leaving the road and a deadline to be out by the afternoon; the northern part above Terrace Bay is closed to all but guests of one lodge reached by air. The transit is a hundred kilometres of desert with one gravel road to Torra and the wreck of the Montrose, then the road east through hills into Damaraland — Twyfelfontein with its engravings and the Brandberg — where you sleep. Anyone who does not reach Springbokwasser before closing time is stuck at the gate overnight — camping in the park's transit zone is not permitted, so build in a safety margin.