The Eerie, Lunar Nothingness of Namibia’s Skeleton Coast

We had been driving for 4 hours and had but to see one other soul. No individuals. No vehicles. Simply eerie, lunar nothingness stretching south to the horizon. To the left, desert; to the correct, ocean. A packed salt street sewed a decent seam between the 2. Below an overcast sky, the three surfaces pale right into a single indistinguishable gray-brown smear.

We had been touring alongside Namibia’s Skeleton Coast, a area also known as the tip of the Earth.

Given the view by the dusty windshield, the title felt apt. The untamed Skeleton Coast begins at 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, the Herero and the Nama, had been killed by German troopers.

The area comprises a mixture of cultures, landscapes and species in contrast to anyplace else on Earth, at occasions evoking a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

My associate and I discovered ourselves driving the C34 freeway alongside this stretch of distant, treacherous land halfway by a three-week street journey throughout Namibia in early 2021. A 12 months earlier, we had packed up our lives and left our residence and jobs in Seattle with plans to journey world wide, solely to be abruptly halted by the worldwide shutdown mere weeks into our journey. In what turned out as maybe one of many extra distinctive pandemic experiences, we ended up locked down in our first vacation spot, Portugal, for seven months.

As issues slowly opened again up in late 2020, we determined we might cautiously start to revisit our unique itinerary. Then got here the duty of answering a couple of key questions: Which international locations had been presently letting in U.S. residents? (Only a few.) The place did we really feel secure going primarily based on present Covid-19 case numbers, testing and masking necessities? (Even fewer.) And most significantly, the place would we not be a burden on the nation’s well being care system if we did occur to get sick?

Namibia shortly rose to the highest of the listing. Among the many least densely populated international locations on the earth, and a spot the place we might journey solely independently, it appeared like a good selection. Little did we all know how awe-struck we might be by its huge and different landscapes.

I knew little in regards to the nation earlier than we set our sights on it and instantly dug into researching its historical past and geography. The minute I discovered in regards to the Skeleton Coast, studying tales of shipwrecks, stark panoramas and Twentieth-century diamond rushes, I felt the pull of it. The wildness, the desolation, the inaccessible thriller of all of it — it lit up my creativeness, and I knew I needed to expertise and {photograph} it.

The gates by which we entered Skeleton Coast Nationwide Park, close to the Ugab River, had been guarded by twin cranium and crossbones and towering whale ribs. The objects served as a warning: “Abandon hope all ye who enter.”

Earlier than crossing into the 6,300-square-mile space of protected shoreline, we had been obliged to provide our names and data — lest we didn’t make it out earlier than dusk — in trade for a transit allow and a wholesome dose of apprehension. We crossed our fingers and held our breath as we drove by the gates, praying that we wouldn’t blow a tire on the rented, tent-topped Toyota Hilux that had been our residence in latest weeks, or get eaten by seaside lions within the no man’s land forward.

This arid desert, which dead-ends into violent Atlantic swells, has brought on many unlucky sailors, ships, aircrafts and animals their premature deaths. Their carcasses — rusting vessels, sun-bleached bones — at the moment are seen reminders of the park’s hostile circumstances. It’s an inhospitable place the place virtually nothing grows, and the place risks, from wild rip curls to thick coastal fog, abound.

Guests are sometimes drawn to the park’s shipwreck-dotted shoreline. Although just a few are nonetheless seen, tons of of vessels have met their fates alongside this span of shore and had been slowly devoured by the weather. Some can solely be reached by aircraft or four-wheel drive.

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

We had been in a position to see the remnants of the South West Seal, a vessel that crashed ashore in 1976, now only a scattering of wooden and rusted metallic peeking out of the sand, and the Zeila, a fishing trawler stranded in 2008 close to Henties Bay, that continues to be a deteriorating however nonetheless largely intact and visual presence, now residence to dozens of black cormorants, simply offshore.

The few man-made traces listed below are all in a state of decay: Highway indicators are pale and decomposing, an deserted oil rig is little greater than a pile of rust, eaten away by time, sand and sea air. I pulled over each jiffy to seize these particulars with my digicam, stretching what ought to have been a six-hour journey into one which lasted 11 hours.

Alongside the street we handed by different oddities, together with the Cape Cross Seal Reserve, residence to over 200,000 foul-smelling fur seals, and the Walvis Bay Salt Works, the place large salt pans are coloured shiny pink by the presence of Dunaliella salina microorganisms. Matching flamingoes stalked prawns within the close by wetlands. Makeshift tables lined the street north of Swakopmund; resting on them had been dozens of sunshine pink halite salt crystals, usually accompanied by rusted cash containers, mendacity in look forward to sincere passers-by to go away a couple of dollars in trade for a treasure.

The barren panorama felt otherworldly, uncooked and highly effective. Each exhilarating and terrifying. The shoreline and colours slowly modified, the sand reddening, as we headed additional south and entered the Namib-Naukluft Nationwide Park, residence to the world’s oldest desert: the Namib.

Now the younger nation’s namesake (Namibia gained independence in 1990), the Namib has existed for no less than 55 million years, its towering dunes plunging for eons into the churning sea.

The solitude and apartness we had been chasing after we sought out this lonely a part of the world — escaping from human-borne illness, sure, but in addition from the slog of our every day lives — awaited us in spades. Namibia made us really feel small and insignificant in one of the best of the way — a perspective that I usually crave in a world overwhelmed by instantaneous gratification and unending battles for my consideration. And ultimately, the Skeleton Coast was a wierd and delightful reminder that we people are powerless in opposition to time, and that in a conflict between man and nature, nature at all times wins.