Mocamedes

Mocamedes, founded in 1840 and called Namibe from 1985 to 2016, sits where the Namib desert meets the Atlantic, and the light and the emptiness are the first things visitors notice. The old centre keeps low pastel buildings with shuttered windows, a nineteenth-century fort and the terminus of the Mocamedes railway. Cold Benguela current water offshore makes the sea good for fishing and cold for swimming, and the desert begins immediately behind the town.

History

The Portuguese first explored the area in 1785, when Luís Cândido Cordeiro Pinheiro Furtado, sent in the frigate Loanda by the governor-general, Baron Moçâmedes, claimed it for Portugal and met an overland expedition under Gregório José Mendes, and they renamed the bay after the baron. The town was officially founded in 1840, on a bay the Portuguese had called Angra do Negro, with a trading post and, that July, a fort at Ponta Negra, and it was settled mainly from Madeira and Brazil, with German colonists helped to come in the 1850s. It grew as a fishing port, with 143 boats and several fish factories by the 1960s, and it was called Namibe from 1985 to 2016 (Wikipedia, Moçâmedes).

What's there

• The pastel centre - low colonial buildings with shutters and verandas.
• The old fort - the nineteenth-century fortification above the harbour.
• The railway terminus - the coastal end of the Mocamedes line.
• The desert edge - Namib scrub and dune country beginning behind the town.

When to go

May to September is the coolest and driest; fog off the cold current is common in the mornings year round. Summer from November to March is hot inland but tempered on the coast. Rain is rare in any season.

Before you go

The sea is cold year round because of the Benguela current and swimming is bracing at best. Accommodation is limited and expensive for what it is. Travel beyond town needs a four-wheel drive and Portuguese.

Nearby

Tombwa is south along the coast, and Arco lagoon is inland.

Key facts