We're in Africa?
Trip Start
Feb 14, 2006
1
34
104
Trip End
Ongoing
Luderitz,
Namibia
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
On our way there we stopped off to see some feral horses in the desert. There are many theories about how these horses came to get in the desert in the first place, but all of them state that this wild herd has existed for about 120 years. We were extremely lucky to get to see them at a watering hole. There were about a hundred of them, grazing, drinking, playing and just laying around. It's weird to see horses laying down at all, let alone, a whole bunch of them just taking it easy. We continued into town from there.
Luderitz is one of the only ports in Namibia. It is VERY German. Most of the buildings look like the were picked up from Bavaria and plopped down in a wasteland. There wasn't too much to see. It was pretty surreal to see the European culture and architecture, but the town itself has seen better days. There were loads of unemployed guys just hanging out and getting drunk. Evidently pissing in the street is a popular past time in Luderitz as we noticed lots of guys just letting it all hang out right in the middle of the street. Classy.
We decided to take a side drive into Diamond Area 1. This area is strictly forbidden to just about everyone except for tourists heading to see a few sights. Since we fit into this category Kelly and I spent a few hours looking at semi interesting sights, like lighthouses, seals, and rocks formations. There were some interesting salt pans and we had a good time just climbing on rocks and exploring on our own. It was a beautiful day and despite our obvious disappointment in Luderitz proper, we made lemonade out of these lemons.
That evening I made the mistake of reading the police blotters to Kel out of the local Luderitz rag. For such a crummy little town they make it a point to rape and stab each other a lot. As we were camping and there wasn't any security at our shitty little hostel, Kelly didn't get much sleep that night. I protected her by snoring really loudly as to frighten off any would be attackers with my resonating bass.
The next day we went to a ghost town called Kolpmonskop. This was actually quite interesting and made the 300K detour worth while. It was an old diamond mining town that used to be the pinnacle of civilization for Namibia back in the day. These folks had everything you could possibly imagine out there in the desert from bowling alleys to dance halls to sausage making plants. They had a swimming pool and all kinds of stuff. The old pictures on walls of the museum were quite telling of exactly the kind of elegance was achieved by the operators of the mine in it's heyday. The workers, of course, lived in absolute squalor, and frequently died of heat stroke and neglect. But there are plenty more Africans, so the powers that be, didn't really seem to care much.
One of the weirdest pictures was that of a Nazi rally being held in the grand ball room. This would be weird in any instance but the fact that we were standing in a ghost town in the middle of a barren wasteland made it even more so.
I think the most interesting part about going to a ghost town is seeing what happens to things that we humans make when left to Mother Nature. Suffice it to say, that we don't have much of an impact. When mankind finally goes the way of the dinosaur, there won't be much evidence of our being here 200 years after the fact.
We got into Snowflake and headed north to the dunes...
