Nothing Beside Remains

Nothing like a ghost town in the desert to get me thinking on Ozymandias:

"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

This place was called Kolmanskop and it lies in the restricted diamond area or Sperrgebiet about 10 kilometers inland from Namibia's sand swept port Luderitz.  In the early 1900s it was a German mining town, complete with wooden skittle alley, and now the dunes rise to the rafters.

A good place to explore if you are in the neighborhood.  There is precious little else you can do on the road from Aus to Luderitz except look for wild desert horses and drive around the sand that drifts across the tar road.  There is, or used to be, an L-shaped pool table in a German bar back up the road in Keetmanshoop that I have fond memories of playing.

Comments

[Laura]

There was a very good Lonely Planet (now called Pilot Guides) episode about South Africa where the host visited this beautifully lonely and haunted place.

[Martin Tip]

Just found your site by accident doing a search for something completely unrelated. I very much like what i have seen so far! Added your RSS feed to my rss reader, looking forward to reading more. thanks

[Tim Abbott]

Thanks very much for the kind words, Martin. And Laura, I look forward to seeing what LP did in its episode. It is a remarkable part of the world and one I still miss a decade after I last lived in the region.