Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside...

We drove away from Seeheim with almost heavy hearts, yet we had been there for less than a day. Namibia was beginning to get under our skin all right. At dawn, we had taken a stroll away from the motley and mostly dilapidated collection of buildings that once grandly merited the description of town, wandering alongside the railway track which had formerly brought prosperity and people to the area. We crossed over the Fish River on the railway bridge, straddling the sleepers and gazing down into the random pools of water left over from the last rains. Only two rivers in Namibia are perennial, The Orange and the Kunene, forming the country's southern and northern borders respectively.

Exceptional rains can however turn this dry ephemeral river bed into a mighty and raging torrent; whilst on our walk we met a local farmer, who told us that in the days when karakul sheep farming was both a prevalent and relatively prosperous profession, getting the sheep to market in Keetmanshoop was sometimes an interesting pastime. Following heavy rains, the Fish River would roar down and completely swamp the original road bridge at Seeheim. But these farmers, needing all the income possible in their harsh regime, simply had to get their sheep to town. So they would drive onto the railway tracks, deflate their tyres and cross the river by the railway bridge, where the water clearance was much greater.

Back at the hotel, our two new friends reminded us at breakfast that Sossusvlei was a must to visit but didn't argue when the hotel managers, Isaac and Rita Nel, said perhaps we would have time to take in Lüderitz first. Not many people would argue with Isaac, laughed his wife Rita: in his erstwhile profession as a prison warder, Isaac's fierce demeanour and no nonsense approach had earned him the title of "The Black Mamba".

We crossed the Fish River over the new road bridge, which carries the B4 tar road over the river at a height unlikely to get flooded even after the strongest rains, the earlier bridge still being visible when the river course is dry or water is relatively low. We drove through Goageb with its lonely fuel supply and some hundred kilometres later reached Aus, a bustling railway village sitting on a plateau overlooking the edge of the Namib Desert.

Fuel please, at the Namib Garage. The garage turns out to be the hub of the local economy, encompassing shop, restaurant and bar, workshop, accommodation and information centre all managed by the ubiquitous Prinsloo family. Other businesses and buildings however are interspersed with derelict and crumbling facades, a grim reminder of how the lack of good rains over perhaps as much as the last twenty years have caused the local populace such hardship. However all the new mining activity near Rosh Pinah will bring a tar road, an upgraded rail link and thus a lot more business and visitors to Aus in the near future, and with it some financial security for its inhabitants.

We learn of the Aus Open Air School (Buite Lug) where schoolchildren from all over Southern Namibia spend at least one week every year as part of their curriculum, learning what happens out there in the great blue yonder - encompassing nature, geology, survival and the veld in general. They will certainly get to know the wild horses of the Namib, centred in the Garub pan area just west of Aus itself. Purported to be the only wild desert dwelling horses in the world, no one can be sure of their origins. Some say they were abandoned by the German Schutztruppe during the Great War (1914 - 1918), others that they are simply the descendants of stray animals from local farms. However the most appealing, romantic but perhaps unlikely logic is that their ancestors were once the property of Baron Hans Heinrich von Wolf, who built Duwisib Castle for his sweetheart, an American heiress, in 1907. He was an extremely keen horseman and over the next few years built up an impressive collection of different blood lines, many imported from overseas. The Baron however left for Europe in 1914 and met his end at the Battle of the Somme. His fine herd was left completely neglected at the castle possibly to migrate the 160 kilometres to the plains around Aus. These feral beasts, recently numbered at over one hundred, have now adapted to their hostile surroundings, by reducing their evaporative sweat losses, moving more slowly and thus being able to go for up to five days without water.

The vista of the desert plains between Aus and Lüderitz is simply magnificent: a shimmering white brilliance of Namib sand surrounded distantly by a ring of mountains. The road spears through an almost ethereal haze of wind blown sand producing this stunning manifestation of shining solitude. Barchan sand dunes herald the proximity of Lüderitz - beware any sand heaps blown onto the road, it's akin to driving into a concrete barrier.

Suddenly the ghost town of Kolmanskop looms out of the dunes, a forlorn but fascinating monument to the discovery of diamonds in the area back in 1908. Boom time, chaps, and this barren coastal desert is transformed into a thriving economy, a bustling community. Companies and corporations arrive and over the next forty odd years do mine diamonds galore. In the twenties, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer amalgamated ten of the mining companies into Consolidated Diamond Mines (CDM) and obtained exclusive rights for this area into the early years of this new millennium. Independence brought control of the country's diamond production into the hands of NAMDEB.

During the forties, CDM moved their operational headquarters to the purpose built town of Oranjemund, where even larger deposits had been found. So by 1956 Kolmanskop was deserted and a ghost town born. Contact the Kolmanskop Tour Company in Lüderitz for the necessary permits to join a guided tour of the area.

We resume our journey in the Land Rover and reach the port of Lüderitz a few minutes later. Namibia Wildlife Resorts (NWR) operates a camping and self catering site on Shark Island, linked to the mainland and town by a causeway/road. If you can stand the strong winds, or even stand up in them, accommodation on this granite outcrop is superbly situated. We are lucky enough to find the converted lighthouse is available for self catering; what a view! And time now to explore Lüderitz...