Activities and highlights in Lüderitz and surroundings
This page provides an overview of activities, highlights and sights in Lüderitz. Touristic highlights are some of the well maintained old houses from the German colonial times, build in Wilhelminian Art Deco. Also remarkable is the amount of appealing coastal beaches, especially the Big Bay and many sandy bays and lagoons. At the Halifax Island penguins and flamingos can be seen. In the close vicinity of Lüderitz are more points of interest such as the Bogenfels, Kolmanskop (a ghost town) and the Restricted Diamond Area.
Bogenfels
The Bogenfels rock arch is a 55 m high lime rock formed like a bridge. It is situated at the south Atlantic coast in the middle of the Restricted Diamond Area about 100 km south of Lüderitz.
Bogenfels and Pomona Tour
Coastways Tours from Lüderitz own a concession and the relevant vehicles allowing them to offer an interesting and unique day tour into the Sperrgebiet. The highlights of this tour are visits to the diamond ghost town Pomona and the prominent rock arch called Bogenfels.
Kolmanskop
After becoming one of the richest towns in Africa during a diamond boom in 1910, Kolmanskop was left by all inhabtants in the following decades. Kolmanskop became a ghost town in the desert.
Lüderitz
Franz Adolf Eduard Lüderitz, a merchant from Bremen in Germany founded the town of Lüderitz, named after himself, in May 1883. The town lies next to an open, natural ocean bay, one of very few along the so-called Diamond Coast.
Restricted Diamond Area
The Restricted Diamond Area is also called the Sperrgebiet National Park (proclaimed in 2008) and stretches from the southern border of the Namib Naukluft Park to the Orange River, the border of Namibia and South Africa.