Ghost towns can be found not only in the southwestern United States, but also in Namibia. One of them is called Kolmanskuppe. And that’s what you read about it in the Iwanowski Travel Guide, Namibia, 31st edition:

«Only fifteen kilometers from Lüderitz is the old diamond village of Kolmanskuppe, named after Johnny Coleman, a local who got stuck in the sand with his ox cart in 1905 and died of thirst. The Kolmanskuppe boom began in 1908 after the railway worker Zacharias Lewala discovered the first diamonds. Up to 300 families lived here, most of them from Germany. Even today, when you visit, you can guess how hard they tried to create a livable oasis in this inhospitable area. Twenty percent of the world’s diamond production came from this area alone in 1914. In 1930 diamond mining stopped and the mine closed. Sometime later the last visitors moved away and the moving dunes of the Namib conquered the city.»

We had visited this ghost town before. But now that we spent a few days in Lüderitz, we wanted to have another look at Kolmanskuppe. And who knows, maybe we would find a few more diamonds and not only bathtubs lying in the sand?

PS. Namibian diamonds are by far the purest and most expensive in the world. 98% of them are jewelry diamonds. The carat price of Namibian diamonds is almost US
$ 450 per carat, more than twice that of Canadian diamonds. (Source: Wikipedia)