Skeleton Coast

Protected since 1971, the Skeleton Coast owes its name both to the whale bones left by 19th-century whaling and to the hundreds of wrecks that have piled up over centuries along one of the most dangerous coasts in the world to navigate, where an all but permanent fog — thrown up where the cold Benguela Current meets the heat of the desert — has been sinking ships since the first Portuguese navigators. It holds a unique population of lions adapted to survive in the coastal desert.