Mirage

The Ever-changing Story Of Skeleton Bay

- Will Bendix

"Slow down for coffee". The words appear out of the desert. A mirage scrawled in pink and blue on a makeshift chalkboard. But the sign doesn't disappear as we trudge closer towards it while making our way back up the point. Instead an arrow points left to a weather-beaten 4x4 where a cheerful woman from Swakopmund is pouring steaming cups of java for a bunch of shivering surfers. They stand huddled around the small gas stove in their wetsuits. A moka pot still sits on the boil, puffing wisps of smoke into the air.

"I thought it would be fun to sell some coffee while watching the surfing," says the barista as she froths milk. "Skeleton Bay has become very famous for its waves, you know."

We watch as a goofy-footer dips into an impossible left on cue. Half a minute later he is belched out in a plume of spit 500 metres down the point. "Oh my Goddddddd! Did you see that?" someone asks in disbelief. The rest of the crew stare glassy-eyed, too tired to answer as they cradle their cups close to their lips, brains numbed by the cold Benguela current and relentless wind.

It's impossible not to be hypnotised by Skeleton Bay. From the first time you lay eyes on the churning tubes that spill down the edge of the Namib Desert, your mind struggles to answer one question: how can a wave like this be possible? It all appears surreal – the proximity to shore, the sheer length of ride, the intensity with which the waves grind into the desert. The landscape disorientates you further. An endless patchwork of caramel coloured sand waiting to swallow the chassis of Landrovers and bury the bones of ships long run aground. But unlike the barren wilderness that surrounds it, Skeleton Bay is an infant in geological terms. Thirty years ago, it didn't even exist.

"There just wasn't a wave back then," says Heiko Metzger, a former Namibian windsurfing champ and lifelong surfer.