“If Hell has a coat of arms, it probably looks like the entrance to Namibia’s Skeleton Coast Park.” And I guess he could be right, if you regard that image of skull and crossbones from a certain angle.

But for others, the Big Jolly Roger on the gate at Ugab River represents the entrance to an almost mythical world of shipwrecks and shaggy dune hyenas. The stuff of the old stories you tell in a seaside shanty at night, while the storms batter at the door, in the midst of hundreds of kilometres of deserted beach assaulted by a furious Atlantic Ocean. It also means a jolly good drink-up in a far-off place. Combine that with the prospect of a fish or two, and you can understand why boys generally like to come here.

We presented our accommodation permit for Terrace Bay and went through the regulation photo session at the grinning gates. On the radio we caught snatches of a BBC report on a Russian hostage crisis and then, mercifully, it faded into the crackle of static. We left the world of current affairs, slapped on some Van Morrison and drove into the mystic, so to speak.

Pretty soon we came to a wreck on the beach. If you ever find yourself in these parts looking for shipwrecks, don’t pass this one by. It’s a respectable wreck by anyone’s standards. The weathered wooden frame still exists, tucked into the sand with its rusting old winch. The timbers arch into the sky like an old hobo’s stubby teeth and, if you go in close, there are great textures to be photographed in the discoloured wood and nails.

Judging by the legends of the Skeleton Coast, you might think you’re going to run into a wreck every few minutes in your drive towards Terrace Bay. Fact is, these vessels disintegrate rapidly out here. The ocean minces them up quite efficiently. Back in the sixties, you would have found a lot more evidence of wrecks. But the true stories remain, faithfully chronicled by Skeleton Coast legends such as Amy Schoeman, who, with her family, has been running world-class flying safaris to the area for longer than anyone else.

As with the sands around Lüderitz, most of the Skeleton Coast is a controlled area, with a lot of it being simply forbidden. And when you call a place a Sperrgebiet, everyone’s going to believe there are diamonds lying all over the show. And so it is with the Skeleton Coast. In centuries gone by some illegal diamond hunters tried approaching the coast from the sea. One guy lashed two small boats together, made a platform of sorts, and managed to get his Baby Austin onto the beach. He was going to scoop up the treasure (imagined or real) and simply drive out of there. But maybe someone had a case of loose lips in a Swakop bar the previous week and “told”, because the dreaded camel cops were lying in wait for him on the other side of a sand dune.

Back in the 1880s, an unidentified German man was said to have loaded provisions onto his four donkeys and walked the 1 600 km from Swakopmund to the Kunene and back. Many have died on the coast, either from failed prospecting enterprises or after being shipwrecked.

In her classic book simply entitled Skeleton Coast, Amy Schoeman records that in 1975 approximately 200 Portuguese refugees from Angola crossed the Kunene in more than 60 vehicles on pontoons. They entered the Skeleton Coast area and spelt the word “help” in stones on a sandy incline.

Luckily for this group, a South African Air Force plane was out searching for a rumoured boatload of war orphans that had gone missing on the way from Angola to Walvis Bay. They found this ragtag group of refugees and an overland rescue was initiated.

Just more than a decade later, a Nigerian stowaway was discovered near the mouth of the Kunene. He (and three others, who were subsequently lost at sea) had been found on board a Pakistani ship and put to sea in a dinghy near the Skeleton Coast.

Perhaps the most famous shipwreck story from the Skeleton Coast is that of the Dunedin Star, which hit a shoal just south of the Kunene mouth on 29 November 1942. The captain ran her aground and sent out distress messages. Four boats of various kinds went to her rescue. More than 100 passengers and crew were on board.

The ship’s lifeboat was used to ferry 42 people onto the beach, but after a couple of trips it broke down, leaving the rest on board. They were the first to be rescued by one of the ships. But no one could land and pick up those on the shore, because the sea had turned too rough. So an overland rescue convoy was sent from Windhoek.

Then followed a series of unfortunate events, the culmination of which was that one of the rescue vessels, a tug called Sir Charles Elliott, ran aground. And then one of the Lockheed Ventura bombers sent to drop supplies to the beached survivors became bogged down in loose sand. Meanwhile the overland convoy had suffered no fewer than 34 flat tyres en route. And since they only had one single hand pump (and no radio) between them, they set no records reaching the survivors either.

All in all, it took a mammoth effort and 26 agonising days before the rescue attempts were completed. These days, with a decent set of charts and the wonder of GPS navigation, only an utter fool of a sailor would end up in the jaws of the Skeleton Coast.

So we made a photo-meal out of our first wreck (the South West Sea, deceased in 1976), had a snack and continued.

Our next stop was at the Huab River Lagoon, where its white-breasted cormorants lined up for photographs along the turquoise waters. Close by was an old oil rig, collapsed in the sand. It was one of the many originally unsightly reminders of mining attempts along the Skeleton Coast. Back then, people were less environmentally aware and when their enterprises crashed they simply vanished, leaving all their industrial crap behind. But now the cormorants had taken over this oil rig for a breeding platform and it looked visually sexy, in a brooding, post-Armageddon industrial sense.

Perhaps this is what South Africa’s Vaal Triangle will turn into in 1 000 years: one big breeding centre for birds, nesting and laying eggs in the rafters of giant corporations who lost their souls polluting the ground and the air for shareholder profits. Don’t get me started. Let’s get back on the Skeleton Coast track. It was time to show off some deeply hidden knowledge to my wife, who is normally the storehouse of facts.

“Ah, the home of the oil beetle,” I said, as we left the rig.

“What?”

“I once read in a Geoffrey Jenkins novel that these little white beetles you find out here – there’s one, look – show you where the oil is.” That’ll give her pause for thought.

“Wrong.”

“What?”

“Mary Seely, a desert ecologist who has far more credibility in these matters than your Mr Jenkins, states specifically that the tenebrionid beetle does not indicate the presence of oil.” I had a brief sulk at that. Then just north of Springbokwasser we both fell under the spell of soft light, dramatic sand dune-shapes and a couple of beers.

The wind was picking up, and I remembered spending a night out here in the Torra Bay area with photographer Les Bush and guide Jan van Wyk ten years before. We’d been veering west from an unnerving stopover in the frontier Himba town of Opuwo and heading for a night’s luxury in Palmwag, near the crossroads of Damaraland and the Kaokoveld. Jan, for one, was looking forward to a night in the bar and a good sleep under the covers without having to put up with our insomnia and noisy 4 am smoke-breaks.

“I want wrecks,” said Les.

“No wrecks here,” smiled Jan. “For that, we have to drive to the coast, to Torra Bay.”

“Well, then, let’s do it.”

Jan protested. There would be nowhere for us to sleep. The weather was foul. There was an acute shortage of beer. And so on. I threw my lot in with Les and our guide was defeated. He drove us across the mountain range towards the Skeleton Coast. To make matters worse, I had found a ZZ Top tape in the glove compartment and Jan (a self-confessed musical no-go zone) was now exposed to Texas rock at top volume. We fed him our share of the beers to keep him calm.

We found a wreck, photographed it and drove to Torra Bay, where we pitched camp right next to an ablution block on the beach, which was understandably deserted on account of the foul weather on the way. No matter. Les and I climbed into our canvas bedrolls, sheltered by the Land Rover. Jan preferred to set up his bedroom on top of the vehicle, in the teeth of a vicious wind that seemed to blow all the way from the taverns of Cape Town.

“There’s space with us, Jan. Come down, Jan.”

“No thanks, boys. You’re a couple of chattering monkeys in the morning. I’ll take my chances up here.” It took a few days for Jan to forgive us.

Now, ten years on, Jules and I arrived at the outskirts of Terrace Bay. We were welcomed by more heavy machinery, gaunt black metal ghosts silhouetted in the grey mist. And a very large, weather-beaten sign bearing the Jolly Roger. It was like the Bates Motel for fishermen.

“I can’t believe there’s accommodation here,” said Jules, a spoonful of disappointment and a cup of panic in her voice. The drive had been rather like a moon landing. And when you’re suddenly on the moon, it’s nice to know there’s catering. Up here in Terrace Bay, the prospect of a bed and a warm meal suddenly vanished.

“Look what it says here in the guidebook,” I pointed out, helpful as always. “The President and his crew like to come out here for their holidays. In all of glorious Namibia, this is the place where Sam Nujoma likes to spend his spare time the most. If it’s good for him, it will surely be good for us.”

“Me, I don’t know so much,” she said, eyeing the prefab buildings and the sad little children’s playground in the gloom, where a murder of crows sat hunched on the hobby horse.

“That’s because you’re a girl,” I said, playing my grump card. “This is far-out. This is romantic. This is the Skeleton Coast.”

“This is The Last Resort,” she countered.

I entered a cavernous reception area and interrupted two guys playing pool by asking if we could check in. It was like finding the last two survivors on Earth after a nuclear strike and having them ignore you. Unless you were the President of Namibia or his crew, you didn’t seem to have much clout with the staff at Terrace Bay. Someone showed himself at a desk and coldly gave us the key to Prefab Hut Number 12. What was I gonna do: walk out in a huff and go sleep in the dunes?

While I was signing in, Jules read the Visitors Book. She found some rave reviews about the home cooking and a heart-warming entry by a man from Nelspruit, South Africa.

“I came all the way up here with my dad. He taught me how to fish using red bait and sardines. We didn’t catch anything, but we had a wonderful time.”

Prefab Hut Number 12, when we finally opened the door, had a criminally stained carpet and an inescapable fug of warm, stale urine. It did my cause no good. I was just preparing to rave to Jules about how Terrace Bay resembled the Isle of Jura in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, where George Orwell wrote 1984, when she turned and ran out gagging.

I didn’t relish disturbing the pool players at Reception, so I thought we might use our stash of industrial smoking weed called Skaaplek as a stink-repellent. It worked like a charm, and within the hour Prefab Hut Number 12 could have passed for a little tobacconist shop. My wife was still not a happy chap, however. The intensely grey, unfriendly mood of the place had depressed her.

But not as much as the two Germans who arrived shortly after us. Even though there were more than 20 prefab huts available, the pool players at Reception gave the German couple the room right next to ours. We could hear them whispering in utter shock as they opened their front door and encountered a similar pissy reek. These two, however, had no Skaaplek tobacco to save their day. They went out to their hired car and just sat. I could see the girl’s shoulder heaving as she cried. Terrace Bay is a tough room to play.

Suppertime. We walked up to the restaurant past the crows and had a few Tafel Lagers at the bar, watching a cricket game on TV with the staff. Then a guy in a nightwatchman’s coat and a balaclava announced that supper was ready. That’s where we met the German couple, over the kind of supper you just want to rush through and forget. Our new friends could not wait to leave this place in the morning.

“You’re staying for two nights?” the girl asked in amazement. “I feel sorry for you.”

But the next day we got the hang of the place. Some of the staff seemed to warm to us, the room smelled dandy and the coastal stormlight shone through the clouds. Terrace Bay is good for fishermen, outlaws from suburbia and those who fancy a brightly coloured pebble beach that roars and shivers with each incoming wave.

The Germans moved out and two fishermen took their room right next to us. We bitched at Reception. I said we were writers wanting space to finish our book. They raised an eyebrow as if to say So what? I had to almost arm-wrestle the guy at Reception for the key to far-off Prefab Hut Number 18 but I eventually succeeded.

Jules worked on her road journal and a half-jack of Old Brown Sherry while I drank some skanky brandy I’d bought at the Terrace Bay shop. Soon, with the weather closing in, the room warm and rosy booze-glows on our faces, we went Into Retreat. And woke up the next day, in the words of Africa explorer Mungo Park, “attacked by a smart fever”. But it felt entirely appropriate to be leaving the Skeleton Coast feeling like a bit of a wreck. We took our Skaaplek and ran away in the general direction of Mother Earth …

Chapter 17: Skeleton Coast