Happy Nice Mall

We had been on the road for four hours and had yet to see another soul. Unmanned. No car. The eerie, lunar nothingness stretching from the south to the horizon. Left, desert; right, ocean. A stuffed salt road had a tight seam between the two. Under a cloudy sky, the three surfaces merged into one indistinguishable gray-brown speck.

We were traveling along Namibia’s Skeleton Beach, an area often referred to as the End of the World.

The title felt appropriate, given the view through the dusty windshield. The Untamed Skeleton Beach begins at Namibia’s northern border with Angola and continues 300 miles south to the former German colonial town of Swakopmund, where bakeries and beer gardens full of fruit pies still line the streets and where thousands of Africans from the two countries lived a century ago. Ethnic groups Herero and Nama killed by German soldiers.

The region contains a combination of cultures, landscapes and genres found nowhere else in the world, evoking a post-apocalyptic wasteland at times.

My partner and I found ourselves in the middle of a three-week journey across Namibia in early 2021, driving the C34 highway through this remote, dangerous terrain. A year ago, we left our home and jobs in Seattle. It was abruptly stopped due to the global shutdown just weeks before our trip, along with plans to travel the world. In what has emerged as perhaps one of the more unique pandemic experiences, we were locked in our first destination, Portugal, for seven months.

As things slowly reopen in late 2020, we decided we could start cautiously revisit our original itinerary. Then came the task of answering a few key questions: Which countries currently allow US citizens? (Very few.) Based on current Covid-19 case numbers, testing and masking requirements, where was it safe to go? (Even less.) And most importantly, where would we not be a burden to the country’s health system if we got sick?

Namibia quickly rose to the top of the list. A place among the least densely populated countries in the world and where we could travel completely independently seemed like a good choice. Little did we know how impressed we would be with its vast and varied landscapes.

I knew very little about the country before I saw it and immediately started researching its history and geography. The moment I learned about Skeleton Beach, reading stories of shipwrecks, stark landscapes and 20th-century diamond rushes, I felt its charm. The wildness, the desolation, the inaccessible mystery of it all – sparked my imagination, and I knew I had to experience it and photograph it.

The gates we entered into Skeleton Coast National Park near the Ugab River were guarded by twin skulls, crossbones, and towering whale ribs. Objects served as a warning: “Leave hope of all who enter.”

Before we crossed over 6,300 square kilometers of protected coastline, we had to give our names and information in exchange for clearance and a healthy dose of anxiety – not to set off before evening. We crossed our fingers and held our breath as we walked through the door, praying that we wouldn’t blow a tire on our rented, tented Toyota Hilux or get eaten by beach lions for the past few weeks. No one has land in the future.

This arid desert, whose stalemate turned into violent Atlantic waves, caused the untimely deaths of many unfortunate sailors, ships, planes and animals. Its carcasses—rusted ships, sun-bleached bones—are now visible reminders of the park’s hostile conditions. It is an uninhabitable place where almost nothing grows and dangers abound, from wild coastal curls to thick coastal fog.

Visitors are often drawn to the park’s sunken-dotted shoreline. While only a few can still be seen, hundreds of ships met their fate along this shore and were slowly swallowed by the elements. Some can only be reached by plane or all-wheel drive.

In the far north there are traces of the Dunedin Star. The British Blue Star ship ran aground in 1942, leaving 106 passengers and crew stranded. An airplane and a tugboat were also lost during the rescue efforts, including several crew members. To the south, the cargo ship Eduard Bohlen ran aground in 1909 and can now be seen from above, a quarter mile inland, as a ghost ship surrounded by desert.

We were able to see the remnants of the Southwest Seal that washed up in 1976, now only a scattering of wood and rusted metal protrudes out of the sand, and Zeila, the fishing trawler that washed up near Henties Bay in 2008, that continues to deteriorate but is still largely intact and a visible presence, now dozens of black cormorants, just offshore.

The few man-made tracks here are all in a state of decay: Road signs have faded and decayed, an abandoned oil rig is little more than a pile of rust destroyed by time, sand and sea air. I pulled aside a few minutes to capture these details with my camera and took what should have been six hours into an 11-hour journey.

Along the way, we passed other oddities, including the Cape Cross Seal Reserve, home to more than 200,000 smelly fur seals, and the Walvis Bay Saltworks, where the giant saltpans are painted bright pink due to their presence. Dunaliella salina microorganisms. Matching flamingos followed shrimp in nearby wetlands. Junk tables were lined up on the road north of Swakopmund; There were dozens of pale pink halite salt crystals on them, often accompanied by rusty money boxes, waiting for honest passersby to drop a few dollars in exchange for a treasure.

The barren landscape felt otherworldly, raw and powerful. It’s both exciting and terrifying. The coastline and colors gradually changed, the sands reddened as we went further south and entered the Namib-Naukluft National Park, home to the world’s oldest desert.

Now the namesake of the young country (Namibia gained independence in 1990), the Namib has existed for at least 55 million years, with towering sand dunes plunging into the turbulent sea for ages.

While we were looking for this desolate part of the world – from human-induced diseases, yes, but also by escaping the hustle and bustle of our daily lives – the loneliness and separation we pursued awaited us in spades. Namibia has made us feel small and insignificant at best – a perspective I often long for in a world plagued by instant gratification and endless battles for my attention. And finally, Skeleton Beach was a strange and beautiful reminder that we humans are powerless against time and that in the war between man and nature, nature always wins.