A relatively short five hour drive from Windhoek and I’ve reached the edge of Namibia, on the Atlantic coast, specifically the city of Swakopmund. Swakopmund is considered the adventure capital of Namibia. It’s true, if you want to go parasailing, skydiving, boating, surfing, or riding dunes, this is the place. The city, however, is just a quiet, peaceful seaside town.

Namibia was a German colony in the late 19th century, so many of the businesses and streets have German names and there’s lots of German architecture around. If it wasn’t for the sound and smell of the sea, the constantly foggy air and all the African arts and crafts in all the shops, you’d think you were in a small German town. Being a coastal city means fishing is a big industry and seafood is plentiful. I had seafood every night here. In fact, I’m confident in saying that I had the best fish ‘n chips I’ve ever had in my life at the local Fork ‘n Nice. Fish, calamari, and chips to bee exact. Yum!

I booked a couple of guided excursions while here. First up, a trip across the dunes to Sandwich Harbour. I drove myself to Walvis Bay about 25 miles south where I met my group and my guide for the trip. Walvis Bay is filled with tens of thousands of flamingos.

This central part of the Namibian coast is officially Dorab National Park and this whole western part of Namibia is known as the Namib desert.

In southwestern Namibia, diamond mining has been the primary industry in the country for a long long time. The further north you get the pieces get smaller and smaller. The diamonds, as well as other microscopic precious stones like rubies, sapphires, and lots of garnet color the sand along the beach.

Driving to Sandwich Harbour was a combination of driving along the beach, thanks to the low tides, and driving up some very steep sand dunes for the views. The sand dunes cover 34,000 square miles of western Namibia and the tallest ones reach up to almost 400ft. That’s a LOT of sand!

I’ve also learned that just like going snowblind, there is such a thing as going sandblind. Sandwich Harbour is unique because this is where the dunes touch right to the edge of the water.

Finally we reached our destination. Sandwich Harbour was historically a fishing port, named after a British ship, but due to the constantly changing coastline it became too treacherous and now the locals just call it Sandwich, since it’s not fit to be a harbor anymore. It’s still a beautiful spot, though.

We had a really nice lunch of fish, local game, oysters, and champagne, then we scaled the dunes for some birds eye views before heading back to Walvis Bay.

The winds were really starting to blow and the tide was rising fast, so we made our way back by cruising over the dunes. Up the steep slopes and across the soft sand, it feels more like being in a boat. When we go down a steep slope, our driver just steps on the brake and we let gravity pull us down. You can see the sand shifting all around the vehicle as we slide straight down. It’s scary and awesome at the same time!

After my tour to Sandwich, I got back in my own car and drove myself out to the salt mine near Walvis Bay, that produces a million tons of salt per year. The algae that lives in the cool, hyper salty water here turns the water pink, forming a series of pink lakes.

Since the salt mine gets all the salt from here, they’ve built roads in and around the lake so it looks kind of artificial, like agricultural plots, but apparently it is naturally occurring. It’s quite a sight! All the white stuff around the edges is salt.

The next day I was up early for the Living Desert Tour, a very different kind of safari. We were taken out to the seemingly barren sand dunes to find desert critters. The first thing we found was this viper hiding in the sand. You could just make out his snout and see his eyes staring at you.

Luckily, his bite isn’t necessarily fatal, but the venom could cause you to lose a limb if untreated. And thankfully he’s only about six inches long.

We were also looking for geckos. We didn’t find any adults, but we found a baby buried in a dune. His skin is transparent so you can see all of his insides.

The dunes in the Swakop River valley where we’re exploring are crazy colorful!

We also found two more cool lizards on the tour. A chameleon pretending to be a rock and a very angry shovel snouted lizard.

We ended by doing some more driving across the dunes. Nothing as intense as the Sandwich Harbour drive, but it was still super fun.

After my little desert safari I drove myself just outside of Swakopmund to an area known as Moon Landscape. The Swakop River carved out the hills and mountains in this valley long ago and today we get some otherworldly vistas to marvel at.

The Skeleton Coast is a national park here encompassing about the northern third of Namibias coastline, but sailors have historically thought of the entire coast of southwestern Africa as the Skeleton Coast because of the crazy amount of ships that have run aground here. A lot of the wrecks are inaccessible and most of the ones that I mapped out with gps either weren’t there or the coordinates were wrong. One that is very easy to access and see, though, is the wreck of the Zeila.

My plan was to drive from Swakopmund north up the coast as far as they let you, stopping to see shipwrecks and other sights along the way. The next stop was the Cape Cross Seal Colony.

I have no idea how many seals come here to make babies, have babies, and socialize, but there are a LOT of them.

There are piles and piles of seals in every direction. Even out in the water there are hundreds of seal heads bobbing up and down and swimming with the waves. As you can probably imagine, it was quite loud.

But, inching into the top spot as the most memorable thing about visiting Cape Cross, is the God awful smell. Holy crap, I will never be able to get that smell out of my nose!

Finally, I reached the official entrance to Skeleton Coast National Park. I thought the skulls and cross bones were a unique touch.

Just a short drive after checking in at the gate I found another shipwreck, the Benguela Eagle. There’s not much left, but both of the wrecks I’ve seen so far leave pretty haunting images.

This place is very much off the beaten path. There’s really nothing to do here except drive and marvel at the desolation. You have the unforgiving ocean on one side and desert sand and rocks stretching for hundreds of miles inland on the other. And apparently, there are lions living here too. I don’t know how because I haven’t seen any game or water, but the signs say otherwise.

At one point the road got washed out by the tide. No problem, just go around through the sand.

In addition to shipwrecks there’s also this wrecked oil rig. Too bad I couldn’t find any info about it or the ships. It would’ve been nice to know the stories. Oh well, welcome to Namibia.

Finally after driving all day through the barren landscape I reached my stop for the night, Terrace Bay. For being literally in the middle of nowhere, my little cabin was quite nice and the set dinner was pretty delicious. In the pic below, mine is the one kind of in the middle with the white truck.

Before sunset I took a little walk along the beach and found a lone seal resting on the rocks all covered in sea foam, the only life I’ve seen all day. There are apparently critters roaming around, though, because I found what I think are hyena tracks.

Driving this region was definitely a worthwhile experience. The unbelievably desolate landscape really is beautiful in it’s own way and having the ocean right there just adds to the charm. I don’t think I passed another car in either direction all day. Good thing I didn’t get stuck out here. But for the sailors who crashed here before the road and before the national park it must have been the stuff of nightmares.

That’s gonna wrap up my Skeleton Coast road trip. I’ll spend one night here at Terrace Bay and then move inland for some desert fun. Stay tuned…