Lüderitz

The peculiar city of Lüderitz, located on the southwest coast of Namibia, was founded in the German colonial period by the merchant Adolf Lüderitz from Bremen, who bought the bay in 1883 and established a trading post. The bay was called Angra Pequeña at that time. 

The city still has a German character, including the large church with steeple and German street names.
As seemingly lifeless as the land around the city, life is so gracious in the cold Atlantic Ocean. The sea is strongly cooled by the Benguela sea current that runs from Antarctica along the west coast to the coast of Angola. It's swarming with penguins, seals, porpoises, dolphins and whales that all live off the fish and other sea creatures. Also, there are numerous seabirds, including the Hartlaub's gulls, Northern gannet, cormorants and some terns. 

Kolmanskop

The area south of the city is the 'Sperrgebiet', a restricted area of the diamond mining that needed to be protected. In this desolate region lies Kolmanskop, Namibia's most famous ghost town. It began in 1908, when Zacharias Lewala, a worker of the railways, found a glistening stone. His foreman immediately recognised a diamond. As news spread like wildfire, there was a 'diamond rush', and the fortune hunters appeared from all corners of southern Africa. 

Kolmanskop soon became a busy and lively town. There was a furniture and soft drink bottling plant, streets and squares, a German cultural centre and even a public swimming pool and a casino. In the nineteen-twenties of the last century, it was truly a European city with nearly 300 Germans, 40 children and 800 workers of the Ovambo tribe. After forty years, when the diamond mining became more profitable elsewhere, the tale of Kolmanskop was over. Over time, the desert got a grip on the city again...