Kolmanskop, Namibia

In 1908, a worker named Zacharias Lewala found a diamond in the sand near Lüderitz on Namibia’s Atlantic coast. Within two years, the German colonial authorities had built a town at Kolmanskop with a hospital, theatre, bowling alley, and an ice factory. The ice factory is worth pausing on: delivering ice to a desert town in the early 20th century was a substantial engineering commitment and a measure of how much money was flowing through the colony. The diamond boom lasted about 20 years. By 1954, the surface deposits were exhausted and the settlement abandoned. The Namib Desert moved in.

The Visit

Kolmanskop is on private Namdeb (Namibia DeBeers) diamond mining land. Permits are sold through Lüderitz Safaris and Tours at the Lüderitz tourist office. Standard guided tours run at 8am and 10am, including the permit, a walk through the main settlement, and independent exploration time.

The morning light is the reason to go early: low angle sunlight rakes through the window apertures and across the sand dunes inside the rooms, producing the photographs that made Kolmanskop internationally known. By midday the light is flat and the rooms less interesting. The former manager’s house is the most photographed building; the hospital ward, theatre, and bowling alley are all structurally stable enough to enter.

Lüderitz

The town 10 kilometres west is worth spending a night. German colonial Jugendstil and neo-baroque buildings in turquoise, ochre, and terracotta line streets that look simultaneously Central European and windswept Atlantic. The Goerke Haus (1910, former diamond company officer’s residence) is preserved as a museum with period furnishings. Halifax Island offshore has a penguin colony visible by boat. The water temperature is around 14 degrees Celsius year-round due to the Benguela current.

Getting There

Sealed road from Keetmanshoop (340 km, 3.5 hours) or Air Namibia from Windhoek Hosea Kutako airport. The B4 road between Keetmanshoop and Lüderitz cuts through the Namib near Aus where desert-adapted horses roam on both sides of the road.

Combining Sites

Sossusvlei’s Deadvlei (300 km north: dry clay pan, enormous orange-red dunes, dead camelthoen trees) is one of the most photographed landscapes in Africa. Fish River Canyon (160 km north of Lüderitz: one of the world’s largest canyons, 86-kilometre multi-day hiking route May through September) rounds out a Namibian southern circuit.