The view is daunting. Colossal. Inland, thunderheads loom over distant mountains signaling heavy rains in the interior. To our left, considerably nearer, a thick bank of billowing sea fog rises several hundred meters high. The sun is just visible behind it, pale and wan; a ghostly eye peering down on one of the world's most formidable wilderness areas.
Straight ahead?
Absolutely the last of the problems we could have anticipated! A flood of bright-red watery mud has cut through the sand track and is burbling fiercely in the direction of the ocean. The inland rains have achieved that rarest of things; a river, here on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, the oldest desert on Earth.