In 1908 a railway worker named Zacharias Lewala picked up a diamond in the sand near Lüderitz and showed it to his supervisor August Stauch, and within a few years there was a German town out here with a hospital, a theatre, a ballroom and the first x-ray station in the southern hemisphere. The stones ran thin during the First World War, and in 1928 far richer ground was found 270 km south near the Orange River, so people simply walked out and went, leaving houses and possessions behind. The last of them left in 1956. The Namib has been coming in through the doors ever since, and you now walk through rooms knee-deep in sand with the wallpaper still on the walls. Brown hyena live in the ruins. It sits inside the Sperrgebiet, the restricted diamond area, so you need a permit; Namdeb runs it for visitors.
ǀKaras Region, Namibia
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