Luderitz & Kolmanskop, Namibia
In the early morning we pulled into the harbor at Luderitz, in southwestern Namibia. This small and rather quiet town is home to active mining and fishing industries. An array of vans and buses took us out to experience two vastly different destinations this morning.
We walked the streets around downtown Luderitz, seeing many of the older buildings remaining from the days of the German occupation. We visited the mansion of “Goerke Haus,” which was built with the riches from diamond mining, and nearby the slender church called “Felsenkirche” rose skyward from the rocky outcroppings of the hillside. We made a brief visit to the town’s tiny museum which held a curious array of items from the region. Around the streets, many of the town’s shops and homes were painted in colorful tones with bright trim, bringing a bit of gaiety to the gray coastal fog that obscured the sun during our morning ashore.
Driving inland into the desert we arrived at the abandoned “Ghost Town” of Kolmanskop. Diamonds had been discovered here in 1908, and a thriving town sprouted up in the years that followed. During its heyday, in the early 1900’s, Kolmanskop had a hospital, ice house, butcher shop, water regularly shipped in by sea from Cape Town, and even a bowling alley. As the sources of diamond mining moved elsewhere, Kolmanskop was abandoned, with the last residents reportedly leaving by around 1956. Since then the buildings have continued to fall further into disrepair, and the blowing sands of the Namib Desert have been slowly spilling through the doorways and filling the now empty rooms. The outer walls of the buildings in Kolmanskop are worn gray and crumbling. Inside the silent residences, colorfully painted rooms slowly fill with sand like a strange and metaphorical hourglass.
Back at the pier, large crates of frozen yellow-tail tuna were being offloaded from fishing boats tied near our ship. The rock lobster season had recently ended, and the tuna fishing season had just begun. By midday we were back onboard our ship, and heading out of the harbor. Several enormous ships were stationed just outside the harbor dredging for diamonds. Dark Cape cormorants dotted the water, and we passed a number of jackass penguins and Cape gannets as we headed out to sea on our way north to Walvis Bay.
