Lüderitz & Kolmanskop

From the Mata Mata border to Lüderitz is a 6 hour drive (according to Google), but I’d allow more time to appreciate the awesome scenery that changes all the time. Check out the Seeheim Hotel, 50 or so kilometres past Keetmanshoop. It’s like Hotel California crossed with the Royal Hotel, where anything might happen. Omaruru the African Grey Parrot will be there to meet you. Also stop to admire the Wild horses of the Namib Desert a few kilometres past Aus.

Lüderitz

Lüderitz is quite a bustling town, once a wealthy diamond mining centre, it's now mostly reliant on fishing and tourism. Worth a visit is Diaz Point, where the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias landed in July 1488. He named the bay Angra Pequena and erected a padrão (stone cross) on the southern peninsula. It's a bleak, windswept place, and you can see why he didn't hang around, but nevertheless it's oozing history and character.

Video Says it Best

Kolmanskop "Ghost Town"

Kolmanskop (German: Kolmannskuppe), an abandoned diamond "ghost" town about 10 km outside Luderitz. Alongside Sossusvlei and Etosha, it's one of the most popular attractions in the country, with tourists and locals alike.

Founded in 1908 after railway worker, Zacharias Lewala found a diamond while working his shift and showed it to his supervisor, German railway inspector August Stauch, who recognised the shiny stone for what it was. Pretty soon the area was inundated with fortune seekers, and by 1912, Kolmanskop was one of the wealthiest towns in Southern Africa, producing 12% of the worlds diamonds, one of the largest single producers at the time.

The Video

Nowadays Kolmanskop is being slowly reclaimed by the desert sands and what an incredible experience to walk the deserted corridors and streets, imagining the lives that were lived here, for such a brief period, and in such a desolate and inhospitable place. Enjoy the photos.