Cape Cross Lodge - Skeleton Coast

From the bedroom I spot a sea bird.  Black.  Gull-like but not a gull. Soars the wind on the waves.  No flapping of wings.  Not a cormorant.  Too far away to make it out.

A jackal trots across the sand outside the dining room window.  It is wary though purposeful, stopping and looking behind every few metres.  Eventually it jumps down onto the beach, disappearing from view.

A string of cormorants head south along the coast.  Occasionally the whole flock, at least thirty birds, disappears behind the heavy Atlantic swell.

 ***

Sound of the sea all night.  Waves.  A constant rumble.  And wind.  It was hard to tell the difference as I lay awake in the darkness.

This morning the jackal trots back the other way as I watch foaming, raging breakers from the bedroom window.  It’s the same animal, with one floppy ear.  Returning from a night of raiding the seal colony.

Moist cool air.  A contrast from the hot dry interior.

Notes from the Skeleton Coast: Industrialised past

The oil drill rig is so rusted its steel plates look like lace curtain:  eaten away by salt air and wind-driven sand.

The derrick, collapsed and toppled into the sand.  Nearby, hyena and jackal tracks head away into the desert.  Why did they come here?  Where do they go?

Abandoned diamond mine:  Remains of a jetty or pipeline juts out into the sea.  T-shaped pillars.  Cormorants sit drying their wings.  It pollutes the empty vastness of the desert beach. Yet, slowly, the desert and the sea are breaking it down.  Claiming it.  Sand covers it and rust erodes it.  One day, it may all be covered or broken or gone.  

Notes from a Namibian Winter

Damaraland:

Etosha to the Skeleton Coast.

It has been up to 36 degrees Celsius here in Damaraland.  A stark beauty.  The earth has turned from white to red and from the featureless flatness of Ovamboland to the broken red hills and mountains of Damaraland.

Mostly dirt road from Khorixas.  Didn’t deflate the tyres but should have:  was sliding around a bit.  Will deflate them before the long day on the gravel tomorrow.

Looking forward to the sea after a month of being  inland.  Looking forward to the cool after weeks of mid-thirty degree heat.