The brown hyenas of Kolmanskop, Namibia
We shared a BBC Facebook post about the only remaining inhabitants of the former diamond mining town of Kolmanskop, Namibia. You can also watch that video on the BBC YouTube channel. (Link at the bottom of the post.)
We’re excited to be going to Namibia in early 2024, and Kolmanskop is definitely on the itinerary! You can read about the history of now-abandoned Kolmanskop in this National Geographic article, which also features a nice photo gallery. Kolmanskop was also featured in our post “Namibia; the article that got us dreaming!” and there are some great pictures in the linked article as well.
We don’t expect to encounter any of the brown hyenas when we visit Kolmanskop since they are mostly active at night. But if we do run into them, we know that hyenas can sometimes be pretty friendly. We’ve had hyena cubs playing with our shoelaces on safari in South Africa, and an even closer encounter in Ethiopia! Picture below is pretty grainy because it was taken at night and it was really hard to ask the hyenas to stay still.
