Skeleton Coast

Skeleton Coast National Park was created in 1971 in north-western Namibia and protects some 16,390 km² along about five hundred kilometres of Atlantic coastline, between the Ugab River and the Angolan border.

The name refers to the remains that line the beach: whale skeletons from the whaling era and, above all, the wrecks of the many ships that ran aground on a coast of dense fog, treacherous currents and shifting sandbanks, with no fresh water and no possibility of rescue for hundreds of kilometres. The Bushmen called it the land God made in anger, and Portuguese navigators, the gates of hell.

The fog of the Benguela Current, which can cover the coast on more than half the days of the year, is also what makes life possible: lichens that cover enormous expanses of gravel and revive with the moisture, succulent plants and a fauna adapted to the conditions. Populations of desert lion survive in the park, having developed behaviours of their own and even feeding on fur seals along the shore, alongside desert elephants, black rhino, brown hyena and large colonies of Cape fur seal, such as the one at Cape Cross.