Southern Africa 2014 - Suedliches Afrika 2014: Castle Duwisib - Namibia Nov. 12

Castle Duwisib/Aus/Luederitz – Namibia Nov. 12-15

After our very early morning adventure on the red sand dunes of Sossusflei, we still have a long day ahead of us, still on gravel roads. 180 km to be exact. We are tired before we even get going, and the roads are bad. Very bad. Lot’s of sharp rocks sticking out, lots of washboard. Our destination for the day is Castle Duwisib. We wonder about this. A castle in the middle of nowhere? We get there late in the afternoon and must wait to visit it until the next morning. There is a farm just next to the castle, and we have a group dinner there, and the owner talks to us about farming in Namibia. It is very interesting, and many questions are asked. It takes 13 hectares of land to raise one beef cow. That is a lot of land. Sometimes, during a drought, they may even have to load up their cattle and transport them to the Kalahari Desert, “board” them with other farmers until the drought is over.

Namibia has had very little rain the last three years, and several of his neighbours have gone broke. It is a hard life. As many of the farmers are of German descent (but Namibian born), some of them did have opportunities to go back to Germany. But most of them came back, even if life is hard in Namibia, they still preferred life here instead of Germany.

We visit the castle the next morning. What a crazy place to build a castle! A german noble man, who had married an American millionairess, build this place in 1908, and it was completed in 1909. That is less than two years!!! Only the red bricks came from Namibia, everything else was build and fabricated in Germany, shipped to Luederitz, and from there is was transported by Ox wagon to Duwisib. They did not get to live there for very long, because when the first world war started, the German owner joined the military and eventually died in a battle. His American wife did never go back to Namibia to live at Duwisib. (I don’t blame her, it’s definitely in the middle of nowhere!)

We travelled on to Aus and then to Luederitz. Luederitz is on the Atlantic coast, and we are parked right on the waters edge, facing west. There is a lot of wind, so much so, that you cannot sit outside, as the sand whips around and hurts your skin. And it get’s into your eyes, and ears, and nose, and everything else!

There are two excursions we do in Luederitz. The first one is to drive to Dias point. This is the spot, where the first European explorer Bartholomew Dias landed. The viewpoint is breathtaking, we are right on the cliffs, with breaking waves. We see sea lions, and I even spotted two dolphins. It was not easy to walk up to the top of the viewpoint, the wind almost blew us away.

The other place we visited was the ghost town of

Kolmanskop. In 1908, the first diamonds were found here, and started a “diamond-rush”. Since1950, the town has been abandoned and the desert is slowly taking it back. But some of it has been reclaimed and made into a tourist attraction.

After the tour is over, we are allowed to walk around town to go look at some of the houses. We only manage one, as the wind is so strong and the sand in our eyes makes us cranky!

Time to go back to Luederitz and sit inside the RV (with the doors and windows closed!) and enjoy a tall cool one.