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Tsumeb, Namibia
Namibia

Things to do in Tsumeb

Why you should go

Ninety seconds on Tsumeb

Jacarandas and flame trees line the streets of a mining town built on one of the richest and strangest ore bodies anywhere, which produced minerals that had never been described before. It is the eastern gateway to Etosha and the last town of any size before the park's Von Lindequist gate. A karst lake north of here took the German garrison's weapons in 1915 when they retreated, and some of what divers brought back up is in the museum in town.

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Things to do

2

  1. Otjikoto Lake

    Lake · 1 hr

    A limestone cavern roof collapsed and left a near circular sinkhole filled with water of uncertain depth, one of only two natural lakes in the country. German forces dumped artillery and ammunition into it while retreating in 1915. Divers have recovered some of it and the rest is still down there.

  2. Tsumeb Museum

    Museum · 1.5 hr

    Housed in a colonial school building, the collection covers what came out of the ground here, including several minerals recorded nowhere else on earth. The Khorab room holds the weapons raised out of Otjikoto, laid out corroded and unrestored. Local history and ethnography fill the remaining rooms.

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