Skeleton Coast National Park — Ugab River to Kunene

One of the world’s most dramatic and haunting coastlines — the Skeleton Coast National Park stretches 500km from the Ugab River in the south to the Kunene River on the Angolan border. Named for the bones of whales, seals and shipwrecked sailors once littered along the shore, it remains one of Africa’s most remote and uncompromising wildernesses. The cold Benguela Current drives thick coastal fogs inland, nurturing a paradoxical ecosystem of lichens, succulents and fog-harvesting beetles in the hyper-arid Namib. Desert-adapted elephant, lion (one of only two viable wild populations in Namibia), brown hyena, black rhino and giraffe inhabit the river valleys. The southern section (Ugab to Hoanib) is self-drive accessible on a permit; the northern section is fly-in only with licensed operators.