user 49155
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A few years ago during the winter of 2020 I spent 4 months driving and exploring around Namibia. It was the height of the covid pandemic, and it seemed a good place to hide out, as Namibia has 2.5 million inhabitants, is 4 times the size of Germany, and when Europes covid deaths were rocketting into the 100's of thousands, Namibia had around 400 total fatalities.
I drove around 12,000 miles (6000 off road) in a rented 1.2 VW Polo, and had many adventures up and down the country, met with some amazing people and took over 9000 photos. I thought I would share a few relevant to this forum, in particular a ghost town around 10 miles from a coastal town called Luderitz, called Kolmnaskop.
Kolmanskop was a former German built diamond mining station set up in around 1910 after some stones were discovered there. The place had residential housing, a school, a hospital, even a theatre all built in the desert, surrounded by sand and wind and rocks, and not much else but the lure of wealth beyond imagination.
I often wonder what it must have been like for lower / middle class Germans from say Bremen or Hamburg at the turn of the 20th century to have landed by ship in what must have seemed a hostile and alien world, and to have been instructed to start building a village in the middle of nowhere.
Just so we know where we are talking about, here is a map of Southern Africa.
And here is a map of Southern Namibia, showing the road from East to West with Kolmanskop on the West coast.
There is one road to Kolmanskop and Luderitz, and one road out. It is around 500 miles long, and once you get to the coast, you have to turn around and come back. To the North and South is the Namib desert, Skeleton Coast, with nothing much except verboten diamond claim called the 'Spergebiet' (you will be shot if seen in there, no questions), searing heat, absolutely zero water, and a large species of brown hyena.
View attachment 525070
I drove around 12,000 miles (6000 off road) in a rented 1.2 VW Polo, and had many adventures up and down the country, met with some amazing people and took over 9000 photos. I thought I would share a few relevant to this forum, in particular a ghost town around 10 miles from a coastal town called Luderitz, called Kolmnaskop.
Kolmanskop was a former German built diamond mining station set up in around 1910 after some stones were discovered there. The place had residential housing, a school, a hospital, even a theatre all built in the desert, surrounded by sand and wind and rocks, and not much else but the lure of wealth beyond imagination.
I often wonder what it must have been like for lower / middle class Germans from say Bremen or Hamburg at the turn of the 20th century to have landed by ship in what must have seemed a hostile and alien world, and to have been instructed to start building a village in the middle of nowhere.
Just so we know where we are talking about, here is a map of Southern Africa.
And here is a map of Southern Namibia, showing the road from East to West with Kolmanskop on the West coast.
There is one road to Kolmanskop and Luderitz, and one road out. It is around 500 miles long, and once you get to the coast, you have to turn around and come back. To the North and South is the Namib desert, Skeleton Coast, with nothing much except verboten diamond claim called the 'Spergebiet' (you will be shot if seen in there, no questions), searing heat, absolutely zero water, and a large species of brown hyena.
View attachment 525070
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