From the Skeleton Coast in the north to the Orange River in the south, Namibia has nearly a thousand miles of coastline. For much of that distance, the windblown dunes of the Namib Desert reach right to the pounding surf of the Atlantic Ocean, leaving a stark yet beautiful landscape. Shaped by the winds and largely unpopulated, Namibia’s coastal area is home to only a handful of towns and villages. Shipwrecks lie in place for decades, slowly reclaimed by the sea or the desert. In places, fur seals gather in huge numbers, mostly free from harassment. Collected here, a look at Namibia’s picturesque shores and dunes, its wildlife, and some remaining evidence of its time as a German colony.
Photos: Along the Namibian Coast
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The wreck of the Eduard Bohlen, a ship that ran aground on Namibia's Skeleton Coast in 1909, has—over the past century—been swallowed up by shifting sands, and now rests several hundred feet inland. #
Circumnavigation / Shutterstock -
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A Namibian desert chameleon climbs through vegetation and sand dunes in the desert area of Dorob National Park, part of the Namib Desert, on the outskirts of Swakopmund, on February 17, 2016. #
Gianluigi Guercia / AFP / Getty -
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A sand-filled room in a house in Kolmanskop, near Luderitz. Once a small, prosperous diamond-mining village, Kolmanskop declined when the diamonds became scarce, and has stood abandoned since the 1950s. #
Paul Bruins Photography / Getty -
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A panoramic view of the town of Luderitz. Founded as a trading post in 1883, the town is named after Adolf Lüderitz, the founder of the German South West Africa colony, which would become the independent country of Namibia in 1990. #
Hannes Thirion / Getty
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