Place to stay · Karas
Helmeringhausen Hotel
Family-run country hotel, campsite and restaurant at the tiny farm settlement of Helmeringhausen, where the C13 meets the C14 in southern Namibia.
Helmeringhausen is barely a village. It is one farm in the ǁKaras Region, sitting where the C13 from Aus meets the C14, and the hotel, shop, fuel station and a small farming museum are most of what is there. Hubert Hester, a former Schutztruppe soldier, bought the farm in 1919 and built the hotel in 1934. The Basler family have owned farm and hotel since 2010, and the restaurant is a well-used lunch stop for people driving through.
What to expect
The hotel rooms are en-suite and all on the ground floor, opening onto a big garden. They have fans rather than air-conditioning and no fridges. Campers get hot showers heated by a donkey boiler but no electricity. There are also self-catering apartments away from the hotel on the farm, which must be booked in advance, and a pool for overnight guests.
The restaurant and beer garden serve farm-style breakfasts, lunches and a set dinner, and the hotel’s apple cake is the thing it is known for. You cannot bring your own food or drink into either. On the 11,000 ha farm there is a guided afternoon drive of about two and a half hours to a chapel built of beer bottles (minimum four people, booked ahead), and a sundowner hill five minutes’ walk away.
Practical details
- Phone: +264 81 637 9521, 8am to 6pm. Email reservations@helmeringhausennamibia.com.
- The reservations office works Monday to Friday, 8am to 4pm.
- Pilots can use the private 900 m gravel airstrip with two days’ notice.
Good to know
WiFi reaches only the restaurant and beer garden. Fuel and a shop are next door, which matters on these long gravel roads. Travel News Namibia puts Sossusvlei about 250 km north and the Fish River Canyon about 300 km away.
Last updated 7 October 2026. Sources: Helmeringhausen Hotel, Helmeringhausen Hotel, about us, Helmeringhausen Hotel, activities, Helmeringhausen Hotel, camping, Helmeringhausen Hotel, restaurant, Helmeringhausen Hotel, airfield, Helmeringhausen Hotel, FAQ, Helmeringhausen Hotel, contact, Wikipedia, Helmeringhausen, Travel News Namibia, Helmeringhausen (Winter 2019).
An Iron Cross, a horse cart and two Helmeringhausens
Hubert Hester won his Iron Cross for carrying a dead man. On 26 September 1914, at the Sandfontein wells north of the Orange River, the Schutztruppe ringed a South African column until a white flag went up at about six that evening. Travel News Namibia calls it the first battle between Union troops and the Schutztruppe. Its account of Hester’s life has his commanding officer shot dead next to him, and Hester bringing the body off the field under fire.
Born on 30 October 1885 in Helmeringhausen, a village in the Sauerland hills of Westphalia, he came out as a soldier (1907 by one record, 1908 by another) and was posted to Chamis, a military station about 20 km from the crossroads he would later own. One patrol he rode on left Duwisib by camel and took 14 days to reach the Atlantic and back.
The horse cart to Bethanie
The farm was called Brons when he bought it. He married Hilde Luise Kaempffer in 1922, and the nearest supplies were 80 km away in Bethanie. Every ten days to a fortnight he went down by horse cart, about four days there and back, and brought the neighbours’ post with him. That made the farm the place the district came to. After the hotel came a service station in 1935, a shop in 1937 and a post office in 1948, and he is said to have put up every building himself.
There is a six-year hole in that list. When the Second World War began he was sent to the internment camp at Koffiefontein in South Africa, as a German. He also wrote for the Suidwester newspaper as its local correspondent, and from 1956 did the same for the SABC. He died on 27 May 1972.
The other Helmeringhausen
On 14 December 2008, a hundred years after Hester left, the Hubertushaus in the German Helmeringhausen (now part of Olsberg) hung about 150 photographs of the two places side by side, many taken by Sauerlanders who had travelled out to see their namesake. One showed a wrecked car in a clump of cactus beside the gravel, a wind pump behind it. The historians who later wrote up the exhibition thought the wreck looked staged, for people with cameras.
A fire cart from Lüderitz
The open-air museum beside the hotel was started by the local farmers’ association, in 1984 by one account. Among the old farm implements are a water drilling rig and a cart that once belonged to the Lüderitz fire brigade. In July 2013 the Allgemeine Zeitung reported that years of neglect had left visitors using the fire cart as a climbing frame, and that local farmers were putting up a roof and labels. One Namibian travel site says it shut again in 2019, with a reopening promised. Ask at the hotel.
Cake or crumble
Nobody agrees what the famous thing is. The hotel says apple cake, at least one Namibian accommodation guide says apple crumble, and coach groups pull in for it. The other thing writers keep returning to is the garden, a block of green in a very dusty place, with weavers nesting in the beer garden.
People who sleep here mostly stay a single night, breaking the drive between Sesriem and the Fish River Canyon or Lüderitz. Expert Africa’s travellers are split: some found the place showing its age, others liked the quiet. One blogger who camped in May 2025 had the campsite to themselves. The hotel says its farm drive can turn up kudu, springbok, ostrich, duiker, meerkats and bat-eared foxes, but this is stock country and nobody comes for the game.
