Day 4: Luderitz to Sesriem

24 April 2019

We woke up pre-dawn and made the 10km drive out of town to Kolmanskop. This ghost town was built shortly after diamonds were discovered in 1908, and soon developed into a busy settlement complete with an impressive array of amenities including; a hospital, ballroom, power station, school, 4-lane skittle alley, theatre and sports hall, casino, ice factory and the first x-ray station in the southern hemisphere. It was abandoned when better mining prospects were discovered near Oranjemund, and many of the town's inhabitants left their homes and possessions to move south. The last families left in 1956, and nature has since taken occupation.

We spent the morning exploring abandoned buildings in various states of disrepair. Many of the fancier houses had intact wooden floors and upper stories, and layers of peeling wallpaper reflecting the fashions of the time. Some buildings had rather unstable ceilings and floors, and sand had piled up inside to the top of door and window frames.

After a few hours of exploring, we made our way back to the entrance to join the guided tour that was starting at 9:30am, only to realise that it was in fact already 10:30 and the tour was about to end. We finally confirmed the time by surreptitiously (I hope) glancing at the wristwatches of a few German tourists!

We left Luderitz and began a long drive into the heart of the Namib desert. The nice tar road through De Beers land soon ended and we navigated our way north on dirt roads of varying quality.

We arrived at Sesriem in the late afternoon, thoroughly rattled from all the corrugations of the last section of road, only to find the campsite we had planned to stay at was fully booked. We drove around to various places, and soon discovered our options were the lodge next door at a prohibitively expensive price, or a campsite 30km down some more corrugated dirt. We returned to the initial campsite, ready to beg for any patch of sand. Luckily for us two German ladies were ahead of us in the queue doing just that, and managed to soften the hearts of the reception staff, who took all of us off to find some trees to our liking - turns out at least half of the campers were in similar “overflow sites”. Relieved not to have to drive anymore, we settled into camp for a braai, a beer, and a spectacular desert sunset.