The San called it ‘the Land God Made in Anger’.

Swedish explorer Charles John Andersson wrote that “death would be preferable to banishment to such a country”.

It’s the Skeleton Coast, Namibia’s northern coastline, where a tempestuous sea crashes into a bleak desert.

Since Europeans started visiting, it’s had a brutal reputation.  So many ships have come to grief due to the rough seas, thick fog, unpredictable currents, treacherous reefs and gale force winds.   Sailors who made it ashore usually perished anyway from thirst and starvation in this inhospitable environment.

The name Skeleton Coast became popular after the publication in 1944 of a book of the same name which chronicled the dramatic rescue of survivors of the wreck of the Dunedin Star which ran aground on the far north coast in 1942.

But the nickname had been around long before that.  Sometimes it is attributed not to the shipwrecks but to the many bones of whales stranded on the shore by the unpredictable seas.

From Sossusvlei, it was a long bumpy drive over some badly corrugated roads to reach the coast at Swakapmund.  There’s not much to the city, but it’s a start point for the Skeleton Coast.

First we headed south to Walvis Bay where a large lagoon with adjacent salt pans is the summer home for up to 50,000 flamingos.  Or as the locals call them, ‘strawberry chickens’.

In the early morning, jackals emerge from the desert to feed on the carcasses of dead birds.  It’s an astonishing sight, jackals prowling the seashore.

A bit further south the water becomes too salty for the flamingos.  But perfect for the colonies of fur seals which breed along the shore and around the Pelican Point lighthouse.

We went kayaking among the swimming seals and it was amazing.

At this time of year, pups are mostly weaned and are learning to swim and fend for themselves.  Except for the mature bulls vying with each other for territory on the beach, seals of all sizes were in the water.  They are very curious, and totally unafraid.  We just paddled in and waited.  They came to us.

Watching them so active, so close was a delight.

They wanted to play with our paddles.

Posing for a photo?

One tried to jump into the kayak onto John’s lap.  He didn’t quite make it and slipped back into the water.  The seal that is.

Another did the same to Julie.

It was a small miracle we remained upright.  We’re not sure how well it would have ended if they’d succeeded in coming aboard.

One did make it onto the front of another kayak.

Coming back to shore, there were quiet ones in the shallows.  We’ve never seen this before.  They snooze in the water floating on their side.  Several were so soundly asleep they bumped into the kayak.  They’d flick their head up, move a few metres and go back to sleep.

It was one of our best kayak experiences ever.

And on the drive back to Walvis Bay, a couple of humpback whales were hunting fish just offshore.

When it’s 40+ degrees in Namibia’s capital, Windhoek, people flee to Swakapmund.  Thanks to the cold Benguela Current that flows up the coast, the climate is completely different.  Cold nights, grey or foggy mornings clearing to cool days.  Swakapmund means the mouth of the Swakap River.  Swakap is an early settler mispronunciation of a San word meaning ‘diarrhoea’.  The river only flows after rain inland, and when there is water at the mouth, it’s brackish.  The San refused to drink it, knowing it would cause gut ache.  So the well heeled of Windhoek have their holiday homes at Diarrhoea River.

We took a trip to the desert dunes outside Swakapmund to see Namibia’s ‘little desert five’.  You’d be extremely lucky to ever see these masters of disguise on your own, but with the help of a guide whose infectious enthusiasm led us to brand him Namibia’s Steve Irwin, we found four of them.  Or more accurately, he found four of them.

Is there a snake here? Look closely where his pointer touches the sand.  Can’t see it? Nor could we.

Our hawkeyed critter hunter could see two tiny spots where the completely buried snake’s eyes just break through the sand.  Giving it a gentle nudge to make it move a bit, the sands parted and there it was.  A Peringuey adder, otherwise known as a sidewinder.

And another one in a different clump of shrubbery.  Great desert camouflage colours.

See anything in this dollar bush?

Look closer.  Oh, there he is!  A Namaqua chameleon.  Our creature hunter said, “If you can find a chameleon, he’s not doing his job properly”.

He must have realised the game was up, and slowly emerged into plain view.  They are uniquely adapted to desert living.  Of the more than 200 species of chameleons, they are the only ones that cannot climb trees and the only ones that can run.  And their ability to change colour is more for thermoregulation than camouflage.  They darken up in the cool morning to absorb the sun’s warmth more efficiently, then turn a paler shade of grey to reflect light in the heat of the day.

After the sidewinder hidden in the sand, we would have been reluctant to go digging around with our bare hands, but there’s no other way to find the tiny, nocturnal Palmeto gecko.  Again, such subtle signs of where to look – just a minor disturbance in the sand in certain very particular conditions – and our man was successful first time.

The Palmeto gecko’s huge, beautiful eyes are almost blind and its translucent skin is totally unsuited to the desert sun.  They come out only at night when the surface is cool.

We moved to an area where the dunes were higher and it was like witnessing a magic trick. We stopped at one that looked no different to any other.  We scoured the dune and saw nothing.  Our Steve Irwin saw some minor sand disturbance, scooped out a few handfuls of sand and, hey presto, a shovel-snouted lizard.

So that was four.  We didn’t find number five, the golden wheel spider, which is native to the Namib desert and nicknamed the cartwheel spider for its habit of cartwheeling down the dunes.  Too cold today.  But we did see lots of toktokkies.  These beetles climb to the top of the dunes and stand on their head with their carapace to the onshore breeze to get a drink.  Fog condenses into water on their back and runs down to their mouth.

And a Fitzsimmons burrowing skink, a legless lizard without ears or eyelids which is endemic to the Namib desert.

It was fun and entertaining, and very different to all the big animal watching we’ve been doing.

Leaving Swakapmund and continuing north, we passed the wreck of the Zelia.  In 2008, this 400 tonne fishing trawler was decommissioned and was to be towed to India.  Barely out of the safety of Walvis Bay’s calm port, the tow rope snapped.  Strong wind and currents drove her 50km north of Swakapmund, where she wrecked just off the shore.

The crew were rescued but some wag has fashioned this ‘memorial’ on the beach from old whale and seal bones.

Continuing north, we visited the Cape Cross seal colony.

This was a totally different experience to kayaking.  The bulls were bellowing and shirtfronting each other.  They are in the early stages of establishing dominance and securing females for the annual breeding season.

Some of the young ones are still feeding from their mothers.

And plenty were just snoozing in the sun.

The area stinks!  We’ve been to seal colonies before, but this was next level pong.  Despite vigorous washing, we were sure we could smell it in our hair and jackets for days.

Here also, the desert jackals emerge at the margins of the day to feed on the dead.  These had feasted and were ready to rumble.

For 100km north of the Cape, there’s nothing but occasional tracks from the road to the shoreline for anglers in 4WDs.

If this place needed a patron saint, they picked the right one.

And then you reach the true Skeleton Coast.  Whilst the term once applied to the strip from Swakapmund north to the Angolan border, with the creation of the Skeleton Coast National Park in 1973, strictly speaking the name only refers to that section beginning at the Ugab River, about 300km north of Swakapmund.

Between 1900 and 2023, more than 65 vessels have been wrecked on this 700km stretch of coast.  Contrary to what we imagined, there’s not a lot of evidence of them.  The life of a wrecked vessel here is less than 30 years.  Wooden boats are smashed to pieces.  Steel hulled vessels rust quickly, break apart and the pieces are swept away by the currents.

Here’s what left of the South West Seal after 40 years, and this much only because it is half buried in the sand.

Back from the coast is the remains of an oil rig set up in 1974.  No oil was found, the company went into liquidation and the rig was abandoned to rust in the salt air.

And now for a gripping tale of survival.

At the park entrance we read a warning that lions live here.  In the 1970s, prolonged drought in the interior drove lions to the coast where they survived by scavenging and gradually learned how to hunt seals and seabirds.  But they also killed livestock from the few farms in the area, and many were shot.   By 1991 it was thought that the last lion had died.

In 1996 a remnant group of lions was discovered in the distant mountains.  In 2002, drought struck there again and the lions moved back to the coast.  It took another 15 years for them to re-learn how to hunt seals and cormorants.

We did not have time to explore the whole coast, and after turning back south we decided to take one last side track to where one of the dry rivers enters the sea.  There’s a little vegetation here and we’d read it was a good place to see birds.

The track ended some way back from the shore and Julie jumped out to photograph some flamingos.

John had been meaning for some time to take a photo of Julie taking a photo.  He wanted to put it on the blog with a witty comment to the effect that ‘this is what I mostly see on our travels’.

Then Julie saw some cormorants.

As she photographed them, she recalled the info board saying the lions feed on the cormorants.  And as she turned, she saw these.

As she photographed the footprints, John was taking more smart Alec photos.

Until he noticed the sign he’d been standing right under.

He didn’t bother to call out.  Maybe he hadn’t been joking all those times he said he was going to send Julie into the Serengeti with a lamb chop necklace.

He walked over and we considered the footprints.  Lions?  Maybe, maybe not.  Maybe just jackals.  But definitely prudent to get out of there.  We later read that in June this year a man had been killed by a lion at one of the other river outlets further north.  We slunk cautiously back to the car, grateful that for once Julie’s super power for attracting cats hadn’t kicked in.