The rest of the desert melts around us like butter, a hot wind pushing through the windows. “We can have four seasons here in one day,” continues Loubser, jabbing his finger into the air like a fleshy thermometer. “You’ll wake up in the morning and it will be freezing with mist and you can’t see anything. Then it gets hot and the wind starts blowing harder and harder. By nighttime it’s clear and calm again.” He nods at the desert for affirmation. “Ja, the weather does what it wants here, and the ship radars only pick up the sand dunes. There are a lot of skeletons along this coast.”
A dense fog hangs over the industrial harbor of Walvis Bay the following morning as we make our way deeper into the desert. Tall cranes poke their heads through the mist like prehistoric beasts before we turn off the highway, onto a dirt road that cuts through a crimson sea.
“Saltpans,” says Loubser, nodding his chin out the window. “When the water gets too saline it causes an algae bloom and that’s why it goes this red color,” he explains. “The flamingos eat the algae, and they go pink too.”
