From its otherworldly landscapes to abundance of fascinating wildlife, Namibia is fast gaining a reputation as a place to truly escape life’s hustle and bustle.
But another part of its appeal for some is for its opportunities for so-called dark tourism.
This is because the country, on the west coast of Africa, has a number of eerie ghost towns with and remnants of a bygone German colonial era with a truly sinister history.
Peter Hohenhaus runs the website www.dark-tourism.com and explained that he finally made the trip to the country in 2022, scoping out some of these abandoned villages and towns – and to see first hand once smart buildings now slowly being eaten up entirely by sand.
Among some of the locations he visited were the ghost towns of Kolmanskop, Pomona, and Elizabeth Bay.
The former colony was called German South West Africa and was in existence from 1884 until 1919.
Peter explained how the ghost towns came to be saying “at first, the new colony was rather only nominal” but “over the course of the 1890s and early 1900s, more and more land was bought up (and sometimes just taken) from the natives by German traders and farmers.”
What followed is now widely regarded as a genocide by the colonial forces. And in 2021 Germany officially apologised for the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples in Namibia. The apology came after years of efforts toward reconciliation.
Now, though, the country is forging a new way forward, and tourism in Namibia is a major industry. Tourism to the country now contributes equal to £297m to the country’s gross domestic product.
There are also annually more than one million travelers visiting Namibia, with roughly one in three coming from South Africa, Germany, the UK, Italy, and France.
The best time to visit is throughout British winter time as its location in the southern hemisphere means the seasons are opposite to the UK’s.
From the sand seas of the Namib, where you’ll find the tallest dunes in the world, to the awe-inspiring Fish River Canyon, Namibia boasts awe-inspiring natural wonders.
The Namib Desert is also the world’s oldest desert and stands out as one of the most sparsely populated regions on Earth.
Its Etosha National Park is also consistently named one of Africa’s greatest wildlife reserves and is home to elephants, rhinos, lions, leopards and giraffes.