Luderıtz

Locals call Lüderitz die Bucht, the Bay, and call themselves Buchters, which suits a town perched where the Namib Desert meets the cold Atlantic and neither side gives an inch. Fog drifts in off the sea, the wind rearranges dunes like furniture, and the ornate houses diamond money built cling to the rocks as though they plan to stay.

In 1908 a railway worker named Zacharias Lewala was shovelling sand off the tracks when he picked up a diamond, and within a few years Kolmanskop had electric light, a casino and a bowling alley with a bar behind it. Visitors tend to arrive for the photograph of a dune pouring through a doorway, then drive back with a full memory card and the stories under the sand untouched.

VoiceMap’s self-guided audio tour of Kolmanskop digs them up, an ice factory that ran on brine, a hospital with a wine cellar under the floor and an X-ray machine built to catch smugglers. Press play, walk the empty rooms at whatever pace the wind allows.