On a road to nowhere

And we thought the drive from Etosha to Swakopmund and Walvis Bay was impressive! After reluctantly driving away from Sesriem – and after a wrong turn we very nearly turned back entirely – we headed further south toward Lüderitz.

The drive didn’t disappoint. It was long and slow going, but once again filled with amazing landscapes. As we left Sesriem, there was desert sand to the west and the rocky Naukluft Mountains to the east. Even better, there were zebra and giraffe crossing signs on the gravel highway and we spotted some Hartman’s Mountain Zebra. 

The mountains and dunes turned to huge desert plains. The road seemed to go nowhere forever. It felt a little like being inside a David Lynch film. In over 125km of the D707 road we saw only one car.

As we got closer to Lüderitz and back on paved highway for a bit, we entered the Sperrgebiet (Forbidden Zone). This is a national park formed out of part of Diamond Area No. 1 where Namibia’s diamond mining industry began. It was like driving over the moon. The winds were crazy, and shifting barchan dunes were driving onto the highway. Suddenly the German village of Lüderitz appeared out of the sand, and it was like we had gone from Namibia to the moon and landed back in Germany. There was no visible evidence that this town was actually in Africa. We stayed out on a point called Shark Island. It partly reminded me of home, but the winds put even the best nor’easters to shame. Thoughts of camping were quickly tossed to the wind and we rented a cute little cottage overlooking the ocean.

The next morning we headed back to Sperrgebiet to visit the ghost mining town of Kolmanskop. By this time sand dunes are forming in the truck! This place seemed like it could never have been habitable. It was a small cluster of houses and dorms on a hill in the middle of this windy shifting desert where the air was filled with sand and dust. Kolmanskop had been deserted when mining shut down in the mid 1900s. The old buildings had the windows blown out, and some had lost roofs or parts of walls. They were partly filled with sand dunes coming in through the window and door openings. Some of the floors and ceilings had collapsed with the weight of sand piled up. We went back to this place at sunset to take more photos. We were the only people there late in the day – quite an eery feeling in these empty buildings half filled with sand as the sun was dropping behind the dunes.