Driving the Skeleton Coast

Salt roads and skeletons

The coastal city of Swakopmund sits on a split landscape. To the south, the bright orange dunes of the Namib desert. To the north, the eerie blank canvas of the Skeleton Coast. We mapped our route and departed just after nine, making a quick stop to lessen the pressure in our tires, knowing that we were heading onto loose gravel and sand roads. They would also potentially be slick from the dense fog that crept in overnight and was severely limiting our vision. Not the ideal day for a road trip but we were undeterred all the same.

The Skeleton Coast is as menacing as its name suggests. Borne of a book written in the 1940s to chronicle one of dozens of shipwrecks near its shores, the name is now even used on maps to depict a large chunk of the Namibian coastline. Interior Namibian Bushmen called it The Land God Made in Anger and Portuguese sailors The Gates of Hell.

We once veered right when it should have been left and got turned around in the thick fog that hung against the pale land that all looked the same. There were no markers to indicate where we had been or which way back to the main road. We felt completely at mercy to the elements around us, like the ground could open up and swallow us. No one would have known the difference.