If now, Namibia has its diamond offshore, it retains the pioneering days of beautiful cities ghosts half buried in the sands of the oldest desert in the world this January morning, the small town of Pomona still seems asleep. The dunes surrounding unveil their golden under a blue sky, while an antelope approaches timidly, before scampering toward the rocky plains that stretch nearby. Blazing sun, deafening silence… The village is frozen, as inanimate. Here, a pile of crumpled jail and a few rusty cans..

A railway line stretches to the horizon… In this chaos almost organized a massive mine – last vestige of the mythical adventure diamond – stands at the heart of the Namib, the oldest desert in the world. Not the shadow of a passerby, or of any activity. Only the creaking of dilapidated roofs and windows disturb the tranquility of this desolate, almost lunar, swept by strong gusts of wind. Approaching closer, the show is beyond imagination.

Each window, each gap is a pretext for further invasion. As if nature gradually regained his rights where man is bent on taming the past. For Pomona shares the fate of all the ghost towns of the Coast Diamond. Their name Grillenthal, Bogenfels, Kolmanskop, Elizabeth Bay… and were the epicenter of the fever adamantine that shook the south-west of Namibia, at the beginning of last century.

But the place aroused such curiosity that the Namibian government (50% shareholder of Namdeb Diamond Corporation, which owns most of the domestic market) has opened its doors to lovers of geology and foreign tourists, local tour operators enjoying authorizations required to this end. From one village to another, so the visit is an opportunity to discover the history of diamonds, this precious mineral born telluric clashes that shook the depths of this land for millennia. The best time all year round. Go there with Swiss International Air Lines. Link daily (except Tuesday) to Johannesburg, departing from Paris, Nice and Toulouse.

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