Ninety seconds on Kolmanskop
Before the first guided walk, you can have the old hospital corridor and the rooms drifted with sand almost to yourself, so be at the gate when it opens, or come at sunrise on a photographer's day pass.
Open from 8am, Kolmanskop runs guided walks of up to an hour in English or German, and the standard ticket covers one. They leave from the café in the main building at 9.30am and 11am, Monday to Saturday, and at 10am on Sundays and public holidays. Or ask at the gate for a free VoiceMap voucher and take the audio tour at your own pace.
You can walk into almost every building, at your own risk. Broken glass and rusty nails lie in the sand, so wear closed shoes, and on a windy day a scarf keeps sand off your face and camera.
The bigger houses on the northern side are in better repair, and the manager's house is kept clear of sand, with its bathtub still upstairs. In the smaller houses to the south, you crawl over drifts or climb in through a window.
Lüderitz, and further afield
Jugendstil houses stand on bare rock above a cold bay, put up in a hurry when diamonds were found in the sand nearby. The wind blows hard…
Winter frost and occasional snow reach this village on the escarpment, which is not what the rest of the country does. A German internment…
A clay pan at the end of the road, ringed by star dunes, many of them over 200 metres high, that barely move because the wind pushes on…