Qualla: Solitaire, Namibia

Solitaire, Namibia: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hp.Baumeler, CC BY-SA 4.0. The name means exactly what it looks like. Solitaire, a single petrol pump and a handful of buildings dropped into the Namibian desert, takes its name from a word that points two ways at once: a solitaire is a single set diamond, precious and alone, and solitaire is also plain solitude. The woman who named the place in 1948 chose it for both meanings, and both still hold. For travellers crossing the empty country between the great dunes of Sossusvlei and the coast at Walvis Bay, Solitaire is the only fuel, the only food, and very nearly the only company for a hundred kilometres in any direction.

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Image: Hp.Baumeler | CC BY-SA 4.0

Solitaire, Namibia: One Family, Thirty-Three Thousand Hectares

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ji-Elle, CC BY-SA 4.0. Solitaire began as a sheep farm. In 1948 Willem Christoffel van Coller bought thirty-three thousand hectares of this semi-arid land from the territorial administration to raise Karakul sheep, whose lambs' pelts were prized in Europe. The first building was a humble two-room cotta...

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Image: Ji-Elle | CC BY-SA 4.0

Solitaire, Namibia: The Best Apple Pie in the Desert

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vberger, Public domain. Somewhere along the way, Solitaire became famous for pie. The credit belongs to Percy Cross McGregor, a Scottish baker universally known as Moose, who settled here and began turning out an apple pie from an old family recipe at his desert bakery. Word travelled the way few things...

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Image: Vberger | Public domain

Solitaire, Namibia: A Crossroads in the Emptiness

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ji-Elle, CC BY-SA 4.0. Geography made Solitaire matter. It sits at the junction of two gravel highways, the C14 running from Walvis Bay and the C19 linking Sesriem and Sossusvlei, both arteries for the steady stream of visitors heading to the famous dunes. There is a tyre-repair workshop, a motel, publ...

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Image: Ji-Elle | CC BY-SA 4.0

Solitaire, Namibia: Wrecks and Wildlife

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Choinowski, CC BY-SA 4.0. Part of Solitaire's charm is the way it wears its decay. Rusting carcasses of old cars and trucks lie scattered around the buildings, bleached and oxidising in the dry air, more sculpture than scrap, so evocative of a vanished era that visitors keep comparing the scene to a 1950s...

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Image: Choinowski | CC BY-SA 4.0