Shipwreck Beach

On the coast north of Luanda a line of ships sits in the shallows, abandoned and rusting where they were left, some upright and some on their sides, close enough to the beach to walk out to at low tide. There is no single explanation for how they all came to be there: some were scrapped, some driven ashore, some simply abandoned. Fishermen work from the beach among them and the wrecks have become artificial reef.

What you actually see

• The wrecks - a line of rusting hulls in the shallows off the sand.
• The low tide - some hulls reachable on foot when the water drops.
• The fishing boats - local boats working from the beach among the wrecks.
• The corrosion - decades of rust and collapse across the exposed steel.

When to go

May to September is the dry season and the most comfortable. Low tide exposes the most and is worth timing for. Morning light on the seaward side is the best for photographs.

Honest expectations

The wrecks are sharp, unstable and rusted through; climbing on them is genuinely dangerous. There are no facilities. The beach around them carries a lot of washed-up litter and oil residue.

Nearby

Luanda is thirty kilometres south, and the coast road runs north.