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 a dense, 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.