Place of Shipwrecks and Haunting Landscapes
THE Skeleton Coast of Namibia, with its treacherous coastline and bone-bleaching desert wastes, is a region of beauty and tranquility, a place of magnificent solitude.
Many of these expeditions ended in disaster, but today's traveler can experience the strange beauty of this remote wilderness in style and comfort, making it high on the list of the world's most unusual and captivating destinations.
This starkly beautiful coastline is very much a product of its climate, with dense coastal fogs and sea breezes from the ice-cold
Benguela Current mixing with hot winds from the interior, to create both its unique ecosystem and its aura of mystery and impenetrability.
The Skeleton Coast Park - which became a protected area in 1971 - stretches from the Kunene River in the North to the Ugab River in the south, and today's traveler reaches this marvelous region by charter flight from Swakopmund or Windhoek.
The area is home to the beautiful Himba nation, who eke out a marginal existence in the peripheral areas of the desert, but the Kaokoveld and Skeleton Coast is surprisingly also home to many species of wildlife.
The sight of a solitary elephant walking over a sand dune has a far greater impact than that of a large herd trumpeting around a water hole in a game reserve. There are also rhino, lion, hyena, springbok, ostrich and gemsbok.
But the apparently barren dunes also harbor a specialized fauna that is unique in the world - a community of interdependent insects, reptiles and small mammals and a surprising variety of desert birds.
An added attraction to exploring this region is hot air ballooning. Details of this can be found in the package tours for the Skeleton Coast.
