Things to do
7-
Skeleton Coast National Park
Worth a full day of driving: the salt road north from the Ugab gate passes shipwrecks rusting in the surf and gravel plains spotted orange and green with lichen. The cold Atlantic stays beside you the whole way.
View more → -
Hoanib River
Desert elephants are the draw, and you need a night at a concession lodge to see them, since no self-drive route from Terrace Bay reaches the lower river.
-
Möwe Bay
You cannot drive here yourself: the park headquarters and its museum of wreck finds are seen only on a lodge transfer or a fly-in trip.
-
Shipwreck Lodge
Cabins built to the shape of wrecked hulls stand among the dunes north of the Hoanib mouth, inside the concession beyond the public barrier. Guests arrive by charter flight or guided transfer. Drives run out to the seal colony at Cape Frio and along the roaring dunes behind the camp.
-
Terrace Bay Resort
Buildings from the old diamond-mining days hold the only rooms on this stretch of coast: double rooms and a few self-catering beach chalets, all facing the sea. Dinner is a set menu in a restaurant whose walls are covered in messages from earlier guests, and a small shop sells drinks, frozen meat and fuel to guests. The power goes off every afternoon from two until five.
-
Torra Bay
Unless you have come to fish in December or January, treat it as a photo stop on the way north: the campsite is shut for the rest of the year.
-
Uniab River
Stop at the parking area on the second delta and walk the signed path to the waterfall in its small sandstone canyon; in the dry season the pools can be close to empty.
