After completing another early morning load of laundry, Mary Margaret and I hopped in our dinghy and motored off to the Luderitz waterfront. In the last couple of years they have rebuilt the waterfront area as part of their efforts to make Luderitz a tourist destination. Given its German roots, they are trying to lure Europeans and especially Germans here. Given its rather remote location (approximately 1000 km by road to the nearest major city, the capital city of Windhoek), it is well off the beaten path. Needless to say, there are not too many tourists here.

We wanted to find the Luderitz museum and, along the way, talk to someone about making arraignments to explore Kolmanskop, the ghost town which was once a diamond mining town out in the desert, and to explore Point Diaz. We also decided that since we would be out and about, we would check out a few stores and then sample some local food.

The town is actually very small and it is easy to walk to just about anywhere here. We stopped by the local department store (PEP) and surveyed their stock. For such a remote and small town (reportedly the population is about 12,000 but I think that includes the various sea gulls here), it was very well stocked. Next, we found the small museum but discovered that it had very restrictive hours (1530 to 1700). Being opened for just 1.5 hours each day tells us that not too many tourists come to visit.

Despite being disappointed about not being able to explore the museum, we set off to explore the rest of the town. Along the way we saw many neat colonial styled buildings and homes, some of which I took pictures of and will post above this blog. We stumbled on a building with an “i” painted over the door meaning that it was a place of information. Once inside we met with Heinz who specializes in desert trips and off road excursions. We set up an all day tour of the ghost town Kolmanskop, Diaz Point (named after the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias who discovered this bay in 1487) and the coastline around Diaz Point with its many little bays. The cost for each of the four of us is $750 N or about $53 US. We are now booked for October 7th.

We next found a couple of street venders cooking some rather appetizing sausages and meats, a seafood soup and a deep fried doughy ball. Mary Margaret is not into sampling street food the way I am but even she could not resist sampling the doughy ball. For $2 N or about 14 cents US, we shared one and were surprised at how good it was. If Greg and Mary are interested, I will take them here for lunch when we arrive next week so we can sample the sausages, grilled meats (lamb?) and soup, along with the doughy ball.

We also found the other supermarket here, called Spar. It was better stocked than the OK supermarket so we know that we will not have any problems in stock up on fruits and veggies before we leave for St. Helena.

After stopping in a hardware store and talking to a few people on the sidewalk, we discovered that a couple of the restaurants we were interested were either out of business or had moved down to the new waterfront area. Thus, we hooved it back there and sat down to lunch at Ritzi’s Seafood. While the food was not as good as the view, it was OK and we enjoyed talking with a young French couple who were spending 3 weeks on safari, driving and camping as they explored Namibia. They told us this is the start of the high season here. Well, during our walk about we saw maybe a dozen tourists. Maybe most of them are taking tours in the desert or just sleeping in. Who knows but we now have an idea as to how sleepy a place Luderitz is. We love it sleepy!