Apocalyptic ‘Gates of Hell’ beach full of shipwrecks, skeletons and diamonds

The salt pans at Walvis Bay in Namibia, southwest Africa. (Picture Getty Images)

You’re unlikely to see a single soul during the drive to the beautiful stretch of sandy dunes that overlook the Atlantic Ocean.

But that’s for good reason. Namibia’s Skeleton Coast is littered with skeletons, whether they be whales, humans or ships killed by the unforgiving elements.

Partly preserved as a 6,300-square-mile national park, the region is often called the end of the Earth and Portuguese sailors knew it as ‘The Gates of Hell’.

Tourists have few options to get to the seemingly post-apocalyptic wasteland, such as the odd chartered plane and helicopter from nearby towns or driving along the Skeleton Coast Road.

The desert begins at Namibia’s northern border with Angola, with rusted signs and animal bones tied onto wooden posts dotting the roads. About 300 miles south is to Swakopmund.

The former German colonial town is full of bakeries, pastel-coloured beachfront homes and a genocide museum that seeks to remember the Herero and the Nama, two ethnic groups killed by German colonialists in the early 1900s.

The remains of animals litter the region (Picture: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

An old abandoned oil refinery sits derelict in the sand rusting away just off the main road (Picture: Getty Images)

The Eduard Bolhen wreck, a supply ship for the miners that ran aground in 1909, is one of countless shipwrecks (Picture: Getty Images)

Skeleton Coast is almost entirely inhospitable and no one knows this more than sailors. Rocky outcrops and ocean fog make the region tricky, to say the least, to journey through.

In 1860, a boat washed up and the 12 headless skeletons of its crew were discovered decades later.

‘I am proceeding to a river 60 miles north, and should anyone find this and follow me, God will help him,’ said a slate buried in the sand.

Their remains have never been found, but they likely wound up at the overgrown marsh that awaits those able to push through the scorching desert.

One of the oldest vessels is the Portuguese Bom Jesus, which washed up near the mining town of Oranjemund during the 1530s

Another is the Dunedin Star, a mammoth British refrigerated cargo passenger liner that was stranded on November 29, 1942. While 64 of the 104 crew were saved, the rest wouldn’t escape Earth’s edge for two months.

A plane and a tugboat, including its crew, were also lost to the dunes during the rescue effort.

Some ships became stranded while trying to rescue other beached sailors (Picture: Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket/Getty Images)

Sand has swallowed some of the hulls (Picture: Getty Images)

The South West Seal, that crashed ashore in 1976, is now just some wood and metal disappearing under the sane. A fishing trawler, the Zeila, is being eaten by time.

On top of hulking old ships are diamonds. And for a time, a lot of them. Ghost towns, once thriving mining settlements where diamonds poked out from the sand and washed up like sea shells, rot along the coast.

But these rare gems do little to make the place not feel like a no man’s land, which local indigenous people know as ‘the land God created in anger’.

Nearby is the Walvis Bay Salt Works, where mounds of dunes are coloured pink by algae, and the some 2000,000 seals that call the Cape Cross Seal Reserve home. Möwe Bay, meanwhile, has a tiny police station where officers collect bones, scrap metal and old life vests.

Head towards the Namib-Naukluft National Park and the san will begin to redden. The park is home to the world’s oldest desert, the Namib, which will soon celebrate its 56 millionth birthday.

Documentarians have long flocked to the park to see wildlife that, somehow, has adapted to live in the acrid climate. Lions, endangered black rhinos and elephants prowl further away from the beaches.

Skeleton Coast is 310 miles long (Picture: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Edward Boland shipwreck on the Skeleton Coast (Credits: Getty Images)

Zeila, once a fishing trawler, is now being gobbled up by the Atlantic (Picture: Getty Images)

Succulents nibble on ocean fog to get by, the ‘unkillable’ octopus-like welwitschia only stops growing when it dies, usually after thousands of years.

You might not exactly be racing to book your flights, rent a car, or charter a plane to see Skeleton Coast.

Not only does a nearby surfing camp regularly make the most of the ‘ever-changing best wave in the world’, however, the complete lack of light pollution makes star-gazing a breeze.

So it’s not too surprising that Skeleton Coast made Beach Atlas’ top 10 beach list this year.

‘This inhospitable yet fascinating area showcases the stark beauty and relentless challenge of nature,’ the website says.

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