When Nicki Minaj insisted that we ‘go to the beach-each’, this is definitely not what she had in mind.
In the Namibian desert lies an apocalyptic beach graveyard – known as the ‘Gates of Hell’.
From a distance, Namibia’s Skeleton Coast appears to look like a nice, long stretch of sand with a prime view of the ocean.
And the closest mainland city is Swakopmund, a popular beach resort 300 miles south, founded in 1892 as the main harbour for German South West Africa.
However, due to the geographical location, the coastal region experiences more than 180 days of thick fog a year.
This has proved to be a major hazard for ships over the years, as more than one thousand are littered across the Skeleton coast.
That’s why, locally, the beach is dubbed ‘the end of the world’ and is known as a ‘post-apocalyptic wasteland’.
The coast itself is entirely inhospitable and over the years, thousands of washed-out skeletons, broken-down aircraft and abandoned ships, have appeared.
Amongst the ships is the Portuguese Bom Jesus, which washed up during the 1530s.
Another old vessel was known as the Dunedin Star, a British refrigerated cargo liner that was stranded back in 1942.
64 of the 104 crew were saved and the rest were stranded for months.
“Some of them are found behind dunes, far onshore from the sea,” said Jan Friede, a longtime ranger at Skeleton Coast National Park, who photographed and documented 112 wrecks during his six-year tenure as a park ranger.
He told CNN: “Even if you survived the wreck you were probably doomed. You struggle ashore, overjoyed that you’ve been saved, and then realise that you landed in a desert and probably should have gone down with the ship.”
Locals have also been warned against surfing against the current, as one person told the outlet: “You don’t want to swim out too far. The current will take you 200 kilometers out.”
“Surfing this high-energy coastline, one of the least crowded on the planet always includes sharing waves with marine mammals,” added longboarder Rod Braby, former head of the Namibian Surfing Association.
“Respect the locals (Cape fur seals and dolphins) and you will be accepted in the line ups of the best waves on the Skeleton Coast.
“Marine mammals know the waves far more intimately than us.”
It’s safe to say that Skeleton Coast is probably not the shout for a nice getaway this summer.
That being said, surely anything’s got to be better than the UK weather though.