Rat Race Bucket List - Race to the Wreck

A journey across the Namib Desert to the Skeleton Coast by foot and fat-bike or foot-only to reach the most famous shipwreck on Earth…

Namibia means Vast Place. The sand dunes of the Namib Desert and the famous Skeleton Coast are perhaps 2 of the most photographed landscapes in the World – in equal part alluring, evocative, mysterious and foreboding. In the ancient expanse of the Namib Naukluft desert, endless skies merge with towering dunes for hundreds and hundreds of miles. Nothing else. Just sand and sky. And then at the coast, the Atlantic breakers come crashing onto the shore amid colonies of 1000s of seals, rolling in on the cold seas of the Benguela Current all the way from Antarctica.

When we were looking at locations for the Rat Race Bucket List, our eye was drawn to this corner of South West Africa and a stunning photo of a shipwreck landlocked in the desert. You will probably have seen that photo too, but you are unlikely to know much else about it. The wreck is the Eduard Bohlen on the Skeleton Coast of Namibia – perhaps the most famous shipwreck in the World. We were so intrigued that we went to find it; our journey could not have been more spectacular. The route took us across the mighty Kuiseb Riverbed system to the highest sand dunes on Earth in the Namib Naukluft National Park. Then across them to reach the wild Skeleton Coast – exploring abandoned diamond mines and coming across abundant wildlife such as seal, oryx, jackal and the litter of endless whale bones to which the coast gives its name. The place was beyond rugged; beyond wild. And there, sticking out of the desert nearly 1km from the shore, lay the final resting place of the Eduard Bohlen.