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ABANDONED | Luxury town lost to the desert | Sailing Namibia Ep.131
1 July 2022 · 19 min · 66K views · Luderitz, Namibia
Desert dune swallows derelict building under blue sky.
What this video covers
Matt and Amy arrive in Luderitz, Namibia, aboard their Oyster Marine 37 Heritage Florence after a 500-mile, four-night passage from Cape Town, South Africa — the latest leg of a circumnavigation that has covered over 36,000 miles across three oceans.0:03 Luderitz is one of only two sheltered ports on Namibia's 1,500-kilometre coastline; check-in took one hour and was free.3:53 The crew samples local food including traditional bugs and a fermented beer brewed in five-gallon buckets, then heads inland.6:09 Fourteen kilometres into the Namib Desert lies a ghost town abandoned in the mid-1950s after its diamond rush collapsed and richer deposits were found near the Orange River.8:58 At its peak the town held a hospital, theatre, ice plant, and saltwater swimming pool, and housed the first X-ray machine in the Southern Hemisphere — used primarily to detect diamonds swallowed by workers.11:42 The extreme aridity has preserved the wooden structures; sand, not rot, is reclaiming the buildings.13:11 The surrounding area remains a restricted diamond zone: crossing the fence carries a ten-year prison sentence or a million-dollar fine.16:39 The crew also visits wild desert horses at a man-made watering hole, a quiver tree forest near Keepman's Scoop, and the Giants Playground rock formations.18:08
Boats in this video
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