Yes, the
Skeleton coast was somehow a bit of a disappointment. We took a huge detour in
order to see it. The entry gate posted a promising info sheet, that a male lion
is roaming the coast. But of course, in a national park of almost 17.000 km² it
is very unlikely that he’s showing up along the one road. As already said, the
coast is cold, damp, windy and foggy. For very long time we saw nothing but the
road and some few meters left and right. No shipwrecks (what the coast is famous
for) and for sure no lion. At one point we followed a signposted shipwreck down
to the beach, but there was nothing to be seen except fog and cold Atlantic
waves… and then we also got stuck in the sand. The last thing you wanted is
having to get out of the car, but we had no choice. 4x4 didn’t get us out
anymore and you can imagine how much our mood dropped after we’ve traveled
through that depressing coastal strip for half a day… However, by releasing
tyre pressure we managed to move the car out of the sand and pretty much
escaped from the beach. Only afterwards we realized that this was the last time
for a very long time to come that we’ve seen the Atlantic coast. None of us was
any sad about it…
The initial
plan to camp on the coast was skipped and so after leaving the national park
(at least we didn’t have to pay for this one) we headed inland again. As we
didn’t plan to travel so long during the day we were a bit under time pressure
to find a camp site (as we are not allowed to drive after dark). Even though it
got warmer and drier again, the landscape was scarce, brownish and no wildlife
showed up. In the late afternoon hours we came close to the campsite which was
set-up by an organization to save the White Rhino. But we weren’t sure if the
camp was still operated as the Lonely Planet is 3 years old and the road was
rough. It was so bad that we couldn’t go faster than 20km/h and sometimes I
even had to get out and direct John through the spikey rocks sticking out of
the surface, very likely to cause punctures. But we had no choice, this camp or
we had to camp in the wild. So we stayed on that horrible road for 11km and
were very happy to find a campsite at the end indeed. The most basic one we’ve
been to, with toilets not more than a hole in the ground and a “shower” which
was a bucket that you could lift over your head. But it didn’t matter, we were
happy to be there, slightly amused about the warning signs (see below), but not overly worried, as all animals had left
because of the drought. But to the toilet we better walked together ;-)
The night
was very quiet, no animals came across the tent and it was so hot, that we had
all 4 sides of the tent open (and secretly I was hoping to spy out nocturnal
animals from there). But as usual, we fell asleep rather early and woke up with
the rising sun.
The next
day we had a long drive ahead of us and a slight worry about the tank as we
were not sure how far the 2nd tank, the normal tank of the Toyota ,
would bring us. And additionally the road was painfully bad. For a distance of
80km we needed 2.5hours and we were so sick of it. Not only that we didn’t
really move, there was also nothing to see, no wildlife, no settlements, no
interesting landscape… it was time to move on to some more interesting part of
Namibia.
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