Two days ago, a news article broke the story about a new type of lodging available for tourists, located along the Skeleton Coast. The Skeleton Coast has long been famous in Namibia, known today as a major tourist attraction and natural wonder— it is desert clashing with ocean, opposites existing side-by-side. As we’ve discussed in class, the cold waters of the ocean and dry air and sand of the desert creates an impenetrable fog and a type of force pushing toward the shore; this has led, in part, to the high number of animal carcasses and shipwrecks littering the coast.
It is fitting, then, that Nama people refer to the Skeleton Coast as “the land god made in anger,” and that this coast was what hindered early colonists (16th and 17th century) from encroaching deeper into Namibian lands.
Yet, one company is creating a resort on the Skeleton Coast, modeled after the many shipwrecks found there (but not built out of a literal, historical shipwreck). The resort will have ten rooms with plenty of windows, designed to give its guests even more intimate access to the coast and the surrounding nature— desert, ocean, fog, mountains, and more. It will be the first lodge ever built on the coast and is scheduled to open by June of this year.
Though this is a really cool looking hotel, it does raise questions about the role of encroaching tourism on Namibia’s naturescape. I can’t help but wonder what precedent this new hotel will have on expanding lodging further into Namibia’s preserved lands— if it will start to clutter the famously barren landscape in Namibia (especially along the fairly untouched coast), if it may have a future ecological impact, if it will start a significant tourism economy on the coast.
~ Elizabeth
I'm wondering how the hotel will be sustained. What if it inspires some sort of town to appear here? This could cause many more implications with humans altering the naturescape.
ReplyDelete-Mark Buckup