Today we explored the abandoned diamond mining town of Kolmanskop and the Luderitz peninsula.
Devoid of other visitors, Kolmanskop is eerie.
Plainly speaking, Kolamskop is an abandoned diamond mining town being slowly eaten away by the blazing sun and shifting sands of the Namibian desert.
But what I am seeing is a post-apocalyptic world. This place is utterly remote, both geographically and temporally – the ghosts are long gone and now it’s just the hum of blowing sand, and sun beams moving over the walls of empty rooms.
The town itself was established in 1908 when German miners settled in the area after diamonds were discovered nearby. With their avalanche of new wealth they built this town with almost unimaginable amenities for such a desolate area. The diamond boom here lasted over 40 years, but by 1956 the town was abandoned in favor of better diamond fields discovered elsewhere. The dry Namibian air has preserved many of the buildings and today you can walk through their old theater and ballroom, ice factory, hospital, and dozens of bunkhouses and family homes, some renovated but most decaying since they were abandoned.
We left Aus at 6:30 am with the goal of being one of the first to enter the site for the day. While the official opening time is 9 am, I’d read that you can arrive early and buy a photography pass from the guard at the front gate. True enough, we rolled up to the gate around 7:45 am where the guard took our 220 NAD in cash and then issued us a receipt. We were the second car to park in the lot.
I can’t see all this sand without thinking of that scene in Raising Arizona when H.I . McDunnough is listening to his cellmate…
“…and when there was no meat, we ate fowl and when there was no fowl, we ate crawdad and when there was no crawdad to be found, we ate san. “
“You ate what?”
“We ate san.”
“You ate SAND?”
“Das right!”
In all, we spent about three and a half hours wandering through the buildings and around the grounds. You can choose to book an hour-long tour, or just do it all independently like we did. On site there is a museum, cafe, picnic area, gift shop and restrooms.
We spend the rest of the afternoon driving around the windy Luderitz peninsula, part of which is restricted land belonging to Namdeb, a corporate partnership between Namibia and De Beers. The rocky beaches are littered with seal bones and bits and pieces of rusty metal. Thousands of miles west of where we are on the beach is somewhere in southern Brazil.
In the town of Luderitz we go to a grocery store buzzing with shoppers and construction workers trying to fix the ceiling in the freezer aisle. We pick up our groceries to make dinner at our orange house tonight and then start our drive back to Aus on the same highway, now covered in places with blowing sand.
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