Beaches in Namibia

Fifteen hundred kilometres of Atlantic coast, almost all of it desert meeting sea with nothing between. The Benguela Current runs north along it, keeping the water cold, suppressing rainfall and producing the fog that gives the Skeleton Coast its reputation and its shipwrecks. There is no beach tourism in the ordinary sense: the coast is visited for its landscape, its seal colonies and its birds. Access to much of it requires permits and four-wheel drive, and the two towns, Swakopmund and Walvis Bay, are the only practical bases. Swimming is not the point and the water temperature makes that clear. Sandwich Harbour south of Walvis Bay is where the dunes drop directly into the Atlantic, reachable by permit and guide only. Swakopmund, a German colonial town on the same coast, is the practical base for the whole Skeleton Coast, and the seal colony at Cape Cross is a two-hour drive north of it.

Both are desert shores. The sand is golden sand throughout, and both sit on open ocean. Together they account for 14 km of shore. · computed from the 2 records below