Wednesday 20 April 2011

Day 3: Luderitz

We decided after 2 long days on the road to spend a second night at Klein Aus.
We took a trip into Luderitz, 125km away, it was a stark but beautiful drive. The first part of the journey reminded me a bit of the Richtersveld; desert mountains and vast plains, before we encountered our first area of “real” desert”.  We drove along the southern section of the Namib Naukluft Park, it’s amazing that anything can survive in this area but we saw Garub wild horses, springbok and ostriches.
10 km from Luderitz we visited Kolmanskop. This old ghost mining town was absolutely fascinating. Miners deserted the town and the sand from the desert has reclaimed the old houses and shops. After exploring the buildings for about 2 hours we headed into Luderitz.
This misty, grey harbour town clearly relies on mining and fishing. Fun to visit but we decided not to buy property here any time soon. Being Sunday, everything was closed, not even the churches seemed to be open. We were starving and after checking out the town from one end to the other, we found the Luderitz hotel open for lunch. OMG, the oysters were to die for and the calamari wasn’t bad either. After a great lunch and good wine we headed back to our camp site at Aus.
Robs and I hiked into the mountains to watch the sunset and had the added bonus of watching a full moon rise. Stunning!!
My one “major” complaint – I can’t believe I have swopped my ‘feels like you are sleeping on marshmallows’ king size mattress for this ‘hard as nails’ roof top plank and inch of ‘hard as nails’ foam. (Roof top manufactures, you have a great concept, please find a comfortable mattress).  I eventually gave up at 5 am and slept on the camping chairs.

No comments:

Post a Comment