Facts and secrets about the Namib Desert, the gateway to hell, one of the oldest deserts in the world.
The Namib Desert is home to the tallest and perhaps most picturesque sand dunes in the world. But the interesting thing is the picturesque scene where the desert meets the Atlantic Ocean.
One of the strangest and most beautiful natural places in the world, where the sea meets the desert.
The Namib Desert is located on the western coast of southern Africa and has an area of about 80 thousand square kilometers.
It extends for more than 2,000 kilometers between the city of Namibe in Angola
and the Olifants River in South Africa 
.The largest part of the Namib Desert is located in the country of Namibia
and the western part of Namib is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean.Geologists estimate that the Namib Desert is more than 80 million years old, making it the oldest desert in the world.
Namib Desert in Namibia
This desert coast overlooking the Atlantic Ocean is known as the “Coast of the Dead,” and it derives its name from the shipwrecks that crashed on the shore after their passengers thought they had escaped the horrors of the Atlantic and succeeded in experiencing its enormous waves, only to find themselves facing another camp.
In 2013, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared that the Namib Desert, with its sands overlooking the sea, is the only coastal desert in the world and the only one in which there is fog on large sand dunes.
The Namib Desert is uninhabited, but it is home to many rare species of plants and animals that depend on fog as their only source of water.
The Namib Desert landscape is characterized by gravel plains, shifting sand dunes and scattered mountains. The Namib sand dunes can reach a height of 300 metres, making them some of the tallest sand dunes in the world.
In the Namib Desert, it almost never rains. However, there is often dense fog along the coast. This fog is formed when cold air from the sea blows onto the coast. The cool sea breeze keeps temperatures low along the coast.
Temperatures there are usually between 10 and 16 degrees Celsius and rise much higher in areas where the cool sea breeze does not reach, so that in these places temperatures are often above 38 degrees Celsius.
There are many vegetated areas in the Namib Desert, where plants called succulents grow along the coast. Succulents are plants with thick leaves or stems that can store large amounts of water. They get moisture from fog.
The rest of the western Namib is very dry and has almost no vegetation, and in the eastern half of the desert, there is short grass in some areas when it rains.
There are trees along the larger streams and more succulents in the south, where shrubs and tall grass grow on the dunes. Tumbua, or Welwitschia, are an unusual plant in the Namib. With two huge leaves that spread out on the ground, Welwitschia can live longer than a thousand years.
Namib fauna includes antelopes, ostriches, zebras, elephants, rhinos, lions, hyenas and jackals. The sand dunes of Western Namib are also home to many types of insects and reptiles, especially beetles, geckos and snakes.
Namib has almost no population, except for a few scattered towns. The indigenous people of the area were the Khoisan people, who built whalebone huts and collected shellfish to eat.
These people are also known as Strandlopers. Today a small number of Himba people live as nomads in the northwestern part of the Namib, moving in search of water and pasture for their herds of goats and cattle, and building conical huts from branches covered with mud and animal dung.
Namib
The Namib Desert is rich in diamonds, with the first diamond discovered in the area in 1908. The Orange River carries diamonds with it on its way to the sea, and many of these diamonds have been found along the coast. The Namib also has deposits of copper and uranium.
The best starting point for observing this natural wonder is the city of Swakopmund (Namibia), where you can fly over the coastal zone, the Namib Desert itself and the Skeleton Coast, where dozens of sunken ships.
Source : websites