Skeleton Coast

Rating:
Summary: A place where ships are swallowed by the sand.
Review:
There is no doubt that the Skeleton Coast of Namibia is bleak and inhospitable. There was a time when Mariners would fear this particular stretch of coastline - and with good reason. Those who's ships ran aground here had little chance of surviving the savage shoreline and those who were fortunate enough to come ashore had little chance of rescue. All they would find on the landward side was a bleached desert waste with few examples of the African wildlife they might otherwise expect to encounter.

Today, of course, we have a wider appreciation of such unspoilt areas and the entire region is now a designated and protected National Park where none may enter without a permit.

Such is the tranquillity of this forbidding region that even something as generally accepted as tyre tracks across the hardened sands are regarded as pollution. Such tracks may take over 100 years to disappear altogether.

In this book, the author produces an excellent insight into what appears to be every aspect of the Skeleton Coast. Geology, climate, rivers, flora and fauna, early explorers, shipwrecks, lost aircraft, fortune hunters and much more besides - they are all explained here. It is an excellent book, easy to read and supported by some first rate photography.

Of course, it is the shipwrecks which are my own main interest but I should also like to visit such a bleak and unspoilt place. Were I to do so, however, it would not remain so unspoilt. It is, therefore, one of those places I shall continue to put off visiting. In the meantime, I shall console myself by reading this book again.

NM