Description: April 2, 2011 - Natural-color image of the Swakop River in the western part of Namibia. The Namib Desert stretches along the western coast of southern Africa, a combination of bare rocks and sand dunes. In this perpetually arid environment, rivers flow toward the coast, but they are impermanent rivers that don't necessarily reach the ocean year after year. One of these ephemeral rivers is Swakop, which drains into the Atlantic Ocean just south of Swakopmund. On average, the Swakop River reaches the Atlantic every five years. The Swakop River appears muddy brown. North and south of the river, rocky terrain is beige. Orange-tinted sand dunes border the river in the southwest. South of the Swakop River flows another impermanent river, the Kuiseb. The Kuiseb has historically formed a sharp dividing line between the different terrains of the Namib Desert, preventing sand dunes in the southern Namib from marching northward over rocky ground.
