Lüderitz & Kolmanskop

We were up at six, breakfast at seven, and on the road by eight. The drive from the lodge to Kolmanskop was roughly 120 kilometres, passing through Lüderitz — just five kilometres from Kolmanskop itself — and along the way we spotted a few ostriches.

Kolmanskop was founded in 1908 when a railway worker found a diamond lying on the ground. Within four years it had become one of the richest towns in the world per capita — home to 1,300 inhabitants, a hospital, ballroom, theatre, casino, bowling alley, ice factory, and the first tram in Africa. The German settlers who ran the diamond operation lived well. What remains today is the opposite of that: sand-filled rooms, collapsed ceilings, facades held up by memory rather than structure. We joined a guided tour through the village. It is one of those places that is genuinely difficult to leave.

Back in Lüderitz, we had lunch at Shark Island — a viewpoint named for a rock that does, unmistakably, resemble a shark. From there we finally resolved our radio problem — after several workshop visits, they now work reliably up to around five kilometres. A quick stop at the local Spar for supplies, and then on to Diaz Point, marked by a cross and the Padrão dos Descobrimentos left by Bartolomeu Dias when he became the first European to chart this stretch of coast — a place he named Angra Pequena, a name that covered the whole coastal zone including Lüderitz and Kolmanskop. From the point we watched a colony of seals on a nearby island, then found a vantage to spot the penguins on Halifax Island. With the checklist complete, we made our way back to Gondwana Klein Aus Vista for dinner and another round of board games.