We didn’t get far once we left Bamboo.The cruiser pulled into a gas station in Knysna moments later: the beast was thirsty, as it were, for diesel. We were also picking up Ben’s Oklahoman friend Lacy. She had a similar visa problem to Ben’s, and was following our lead of border hopping http://stmcneil.com/dispatches/the-south/78-02022010.html to get a visa extension. We crammed her and her three bags in the back amongst the books, gas cylinders, and running shoes and headed towards Cape Agulhas, as close to Antartica as you can get in Africa without going naval.
Grey rain clouds covered the sky as we pulled into Traveler’s Lodge four hours later. I hardly noticed the time and kilometers pass. John the maitredee, stocky with curly, long black hair, drew a map to a shipwreck on the coast for us. The Japanese freighter Meisho Maru lay near where it crashed in 1982. Its deck and hold is cracked open, black with weather and, at the time, was covered in dark sea birds. I hopped across the tideflat and stood at the corpse of the hull, photographing and pondering.
John offered me a room in the unfinished headquarters of a new kite-surfing school, and I left Ben and Lacy in the backpackers for a drywall cube. First night on the road, and again luck was shining: I didn’t have to sleep in the cruiser during a rainstorm. Ben woke us up with eggs and toast with peanut butter, and we gunned it west to Kaapstadt. Here we were to finalize our preparations: pick up extra passport pages from the American consul, a carnet de passage from AA Insurance, and food. Alas, in the parking lot, loading the last of our cans, we somehow blew a flat. My fourth in Africa, it came in hindsight at the perfect time. While the headache pushed us to aggravation, it returned us and our car to Gulam and Continental Tyres.
The cruiser is old. Well-taken care of by its previous owner, an automechanic and engineer named Villy, the car’s main weakness is its four rolling legs. The original 1984 rims were produced when tyres and rims were a technology much like current bicycle tyres. They require tubes, which are prone to pop with new, rimless tyres. Our three flats in the cruiser were caused by this technological gap. Gulam recommended new rims and he could deliver in twenty-four hours. We trusted him and accepted the price of time and rand. With just one spare now, we stayed in a cheap backpacker and returned in the morning to get fitted.
Our cruiser rolled north from Cape Town the next day as the gold of afternoon blazed across the sky. We were headed towards the Cederberg Mountains and a campsite called The Oasis. Listening to Johnny Cash, Lovage and John Coltrane, we pulled off after Citrusdale on a dirt road as darkness fell. The headlights did little damage to the blackness. The clutter of the cruiser rocked and rolled as I swerved across the dirt and rocks. We passed the small town of Algeria before we began ascending the mountains. The weight of our gear kept us in third gear most of the way, second on the steep grades, and most of our roof-top gear shook on every bump.
“The cieling is shaking,” I said.
We pulled over and re-tied the roof cargo: lashing trucker straps on our second spare tyre and our rack’s ladder. The gibbeous moon hung high in the low clouds. Everything was lit by its reflected light. Us, the car and the barren moonscape of the Cederberg Mountains - all pale grey. We climbed into the suffocating embrace of low, dense fog, and the road disappeared ten meters ahead. The cruiser crawled, while Lacy with her head out the window on the left checked for disaster hidden in the mists.
Kherrit was waiting for us in his lime grove: a husky voice and a strong handshake around midnight. His three dogs roamed the camp as we pitched tent, unpacked and drank in the moonlight on his gigantic three-story farmhouse. I climbed into the back of the cruiser soon after to sleep under a clear sky amidst grumbles from the canines.
The morning sun lit the cruiser’s innards brightly, waking me early on my soft, mottled pink cot. I found Ben at a wooden slab of a breakfast table with Kheritt, looking at a hand-drawn map.
“That’s page one,” Kheritt said as he flipped the scrawled over sheet and continued his blue-ink cartography. In a series of jokes, stories, and Afrikaans-tinted descriptions of rock formations and paths, he drew us a total of three pages of cartoons and maps for our hike.
Lacey, Ben and I left late, full of rusks and coffee, arriving at the base of The Cracks around eleven. These are deep fissures like canyons where water and wind eroded thin slices between sections of mountains. We climbed in an overcast sky, up red rocks and dry-adapted vegetation. Succulents, proteas and thorn bushes spotted the shattered sandstone as our party made its way up. Ben and I took the harder path - a three meter face followed by a pinhole tunnel - to pass beneath the deepest cuts in the mountain. Like beetles in a cornfield, we climbed single-file up to the top of the orange and brown peak.
The view was second only to the depths of The Cracks. Here too were the remnants of geological destruction. Long rocks, broken in segments, lay like cut up snakes on the plateau. White clouds vaulted across blue sky above the black, brown and orange of the slabs. Small wells carved like cup holds in the rock reflected the cumulus formations. Common mountain lizards, grey with a thick brown stripe on their spine, darted before our plodding feet. Breathing deep, we checked the lateness of the hour and swung our heads to valley below, splotched with darkness. We then headed down to the cloud shadows.
The white cruiser waited, luke warm in the overcast sky and comfortable with its cloth seats and mattresses. As I settled into the back, feet resting on an empty 4.5 liter gas cylinder, I stumbled upon a definition for my relaxation. I was home.
We again slept at the Kherrit’s farm, but rose and left early. After a long drive north, our heavy cruiser hit the Namibian border at Vielsdorp. After a simple, relaxed border process, we entered the hot aridness of old South West Germany. We quickly cut left of the asphalt into the shade of a palm tree. Locking the doors and glovebox, we ventured inside: here we were to leave Lacey to cross back over the border at 2 am to get a new South African tourist visa. As we waited she bought us three beers each of Tefl and Windhoek - two excellent beers from Namibia I put alongside Peroni and Pacifico in refreshment. A schneider? dog goofed off on the glass as Lacey called, faxed and cajoled the hotel managment and the bus company to guarantee her safe passage back to Cape Town.
Rather randy, Ben and I left her there. I was happy to be on the road without her: now it was just us brothers McNeil.
We rolled alongside the Orange River soon after, past our previous accomodation at Felix Unite, to Camp Abibas. The caretaker Shilongwe was using a metal grinder to polish a cane when we arrived. He earned a spot in both our hearts with access to the ice machine. The heat of the day had died down, and we comfortably pitched camp alongside the river in an almost empty campsite. Soon, a six-pack of loud, pale and old Polish men camped near us, but nothing could cut the freedom and openness of our trip’s beginning. We hooked Ben’s Algerian spyscope to my tripod and looked at the seas and craters of the moon into the night.
After Ben had gone to bed, a woman approached me. Friendly, but startling nonetheless in the bare light of the moon and candle, we chatted a bit. Jody was an Australian looking for a ride north. Ben and I had trouble fitting just Lacey, so I told her we’d have to see how the repacking went the following morning.
The reshuffling of our gear bought us enough space for two travellers. We also had a quite under utilized roof rack. But Jody was gone with her partner, and Ben and I made our final preparations thinking not of them, just our now cold freezer full of ice, water and fruit.
In the already sizzling heat of midmorning we hit the road away from the silty Orange River. On the corner, we spotted two hitchhikers, and peering closely, I recognized Jody. Ben and I drove past, looked at each other, then circled around to pick them up. They were clad in essential hiking gear: self-drying longsleeves and trousers with zip-off legs, sun hats and sunglasses, big internal frame packs heavy and compact.
“Before we go any farther,” I said as we loaded them and their bags in the cruiser with an outstretched hand, “I am Sam and this is my brother Ben.”
“I am Maddy,” said Jody’s partner, smiling under his beard. Later, we would learn he was a Czechloslovakian who had worked all over the world as an astronomer. But for now, he sat with his girl on cushions in the back of our cruiser as we sped through the flat dryness.
We headed west and then north into the Fish River Canyon. I don’t know why we didn’t think a little more about going to Ai Ais on such a hot day - the name means Scalding Waters - but did. Ben parked under date palm fronds right at the sun’s zenith. I grabbed some dates, we drank warm water and panted in the shade. All the pools at Ai Ais were fed by a geyser and thus hot. Not what we needed. We sweated all day until we found a slightly less hot pool. Getting out was the best part: the wind chilled as it dried on skin.
The camp was a lane of green between two red rock faces. The sun set early and the moon rose late; our elevation was so low. Maddy, Jody and I walked upriver to a small dam for sunset, and photographed fish unsuccessfully trying to overcome the concrete barrier. Somehow, we all found enough coolness after a few Tefls to pass out in this oven of valleys. I hardly slept, and was almost grateful to be woken at 4:30 am by brother Ben.
We quickly packed our car and helped the Aussies. The air was heavenly cool and the moon shone nearly full. We checked out at the gate and shot out into the dark. Villy’s floodlights burned away the night as we sped across gravel roads towards a rendezvous with the rising sun. The moon set blood red with the sky still black. Zebras galloped along the rocky road. Our skottel flew off into the darnkess. I turned the steering wheel towards Hobas and shifted into second gear as we reached the top of the rock formation. We got out excitedly as the sky lightened to blue, with a subtle yellow and orange along its eastern edge. The walk was unmarked and rough, but it delivered us to a panoramic view of beatiful, deep canyons. Curving across my vision, the Fish River muddy below and the cactuses dark red above, the sight awed while at the same time blossoming.
The sun cut down in straight lights across the strata, slowly revealing textures and in effect giving more detail and depth to the awesome sight. We struck a group pose, gasped some more, and sat awhile thinking.
The white cruiser was waiting for us. I ate a mango with my leatherman before we boarded the beast again, this time to head for shade at the Hobas campsite. I immediately felt stupid for camping at the hot springs and not atop the canyon. Here wind cooled us beneath acacia trees and a bright turqouise pool healed with its frigid waters. The Aussies made lunch with soy protein and potatoes, Ben read Last Resort and I translated another section of Ali Baba wa Al-Lassoos (Ali Baba and the Thieves). Rejuvinated, watered and rested, we then piled in to go north by northeast three hours to Keetmanshoop.
This is the provincial center of the south, which means, as Gordon says, “fuck all.” We dropped Maddy and Jody off at their train to Windhoek and bought diesel and food. Most of the shops were locked, few people walked the streets, and many buildings, cars, appliances and devices lay broken along the road. Ben and I drove to the Quiver Tree Forest next, setting up our kitchen and tent before walking to the kokerbooms. Our only neighbors had a pet warthog. The quiver tree or kokerbooms are a succelnt aloe whose limbs were hollowed out and filled with arrows by the Bushmen. They look like giant aloes grafted ontop of palm tree trunks. Tired, we tucked in early after the best meal of the trip: cabbage and carrot sauteed then poured over egg-fried rice.
In the morning both Ben and I ran down the gravel road towards Giant’s Playground. Later, we visited the odd piles and towers of rocks, some covered in bird shit, others inhabited by rock hyrax or dassies, which looked like big rats or beavers without tails. After hiking through them, we got on the road west, towards the coast.
Three hours later we pulled into Aus. The small village was a popular tourist rest stop, a midpoint on journeys between the Atlantic Ocean and the dunes and canyons of the central lands. Ben and I finished off two beers and hit the road again, laughing at the shennanagins of the German tourists who had inundated the bar as we imbibed. Soon, we pulled over. Seven feral horses were crossing the road. Their gaunt figures were beautiful, sad and powerful at the same time. These were the desert horses of Namibia. There are two contending stories to their origin: a lost herd from the German occupation force Schuztruppe survived and adapted to the desolation or Arabian steeds brought and then lost by South Africa during their occupation of Namibia did the same. Genetic testing lends support to the latter, but the colonial myth of the German forces here, with their leftover castles, Black Forest cake and beer recipes, might prove stronger.
We left the horses plodding across the bleak landscape to drive to Luderitz, the entry point of the German experience in Namibia. Under Otto Von Bismark, Germany had forgone the scramble for Africa. Bismark himself had snubbed colonialism, stating that Europe was his Africa, and he need look no further for conquest and granduer. But, a powerful German merchant named Adolf Luderitz went outside this directive in 1883 and bought Angra Pequena from the local population. Now known by the surname of a merchant who never set foot in it, the town grew slowly until diamonds were found scattered round the harbor city.
The rush brought prosperity to Luderitz, the German Imperial Army to Namibia, and opulence to the sands. Casinos, brothels, theaters, champagne and lace sprouted across the desert, seemingly following the diamonds scattered across it. The boom busted with the loss of the diamonds, and many ghost towns litter the lands around Luderitz. Luderitz itself has a ghostly feel, like something large came and went but still watches. Ben and I again muttered the Gordon proverb “fuckall” as we parked the car and rented a square of space in a parking lot for the night.
We wandered the city a little, down to the harbor flanked by dunes and a rocky spit. Most stores were closed, the streets nearly empty, rank stank of urine and fish guts wafting on the breeze. Few whites and many coloreds; lots of Afrikaans and German spoken.
At the backpackers we met a Canadian named Ben, gangly with a lotus flower and Hermetic seal tattoo on his forearm. From Victoria, a stone’s throw from Bellingham, he had been hitchhiking for two months already in southern Africa, and had Angolan plans. Big, black thorns carved from wood hung from his ears, his blonde hair a sparse, fading mat. He agreed after beers to splitting fuel to the oldest dunes in the world.
The morning came quicker than expected, and in the rush, we regrettably left Luderitz our cutting board and plastic spatula. Stopping in Aus to deflate our tyres to 1.6 psi each, we hit gravel road north through plains flanked by large, green mountains. Rain clouds covered the sky, a welcome sight when remembering the soaring temperatures of the last week. Lightning sparked during the day’s drive. Ostrich, cows, and springbok sauntered in the fields (a smaller reindeer with a white belly striped black). New Ben ate beans out of a can in the back as we pulled into Duwisib Castle.
Duwisib was built by a man named Von Wolf. He was a member of the German Imperial Army, and had invested heavily in the colonization of Namibia. From Luderitz, a thirty-wagon oxen train brought the castle piece by piece to the high desert. Von Wolf then brought his American wife to the red stone fortification, buitl to German medieval standards and filled with European-crafted elegance and decadence. A photograph of the couple hangs in the dining room: he is staring serious off camera in military clothes, she is raising one eyebrow, her gaze in a half roll. Other officers’ and ladies’ portraits hung from the walls with guns and springbok skulls. Von Wolf was enroute to Argentina for vacation with his wife when the Great War broke. He rushed into service, only to be killed two weeks after deployment iin Somme. His wife never returned to their Namibian castle.
New Ben again ate from a can as we panted in the shade, muttering critiques to the German colonial program. What could they have dreamed to make in this thirstland? It might not have been the land, however, as I am reminded with every Namibian dollar I handle. Henry Wittboi stares back at me, grim beneath a broad rimmed hat. This is the native resistance leader who successfully bloodied the Germans enough to weaken them, helping South Africa defeat them during the Great War.
Hours later we grumbled to a halt on an empty tank in Sesreim. Here we filled up, got a new gas cap, and rented a space to pitch tent. Later we ran to the Sesreim canyon and itsbeauty carved from glacial retreat 5 to 20 million years ago. But we were here for Sossusvlei, the center of Namibia’s tourist sector.
Here is entrance to the most stunning views of the ancient Namib desert. When South America split from the post-Pangea supercontinent Gondwana, the resulting chasm was filled with frigid, Antartic waters. That initial flood developed into the Benguela Current, which now continually sweeps by up southern Africa to Angloa, sucking moisture from the atmosphere as it curls towards the mid Atlantic. This lead to eons of thirstland evolution and adaptation, and many of the animals and plants here are unique to the region and the strongest in the world for arid survival.
Ben, Ben and I drove out at dawn to climb Dune 45 in Sossusvlei, the most accesible of the red mounds lining the landscape. We then climbed down to drive the sandy, 4x4-only road to Deadvlei. On the way, an oryx ran alongside our cruiser. The oryx, a hooved reindeer relative called gemsbok in Afrikaans, has a face like a skeleton’s, straight horns have gouged lions, and a special way of cooling: it runs so fast it the wind chills it nearly 10’C.
With the magical creature fresh in our minds, we hiked under the rising sun towards broken trees and an annihilated land. Deadvlei is a clay pan baked in the sun to look like giant, grey elephant skin dried and laid out between the mountains of red dunes. Trees, dead and blacked from the sun, stagger skyward, crying for help. Small lizards and birds live in their shades, miraculously, but the overall feeling is of a cemetery. A masoleum, if you will, of what water can bring and the sun can take away.
After passing a colorfully clad group of tourists, downing some sugary instant coffee, we dropped New Ben off at the junction. He hoisted his backpack, full of canned foods and no can opener, on his purple shirt and started walking north along the highway. Brother Ben and I shook our heads, mystified, shocked and a little worried for our vagabond friend.
Ben then drove southeast and curved around the Naukluft mountains. We camped by the Naukluft river, and firmly secured all our foodstuffs inside the cruiser after a stern baboon warning. In the morning we rose with the sun to hike the 17 kilometer Waterkloof trail. A red wasp stung me at the beginning of the hike; my left elbow swelled, but nothing deadly. We continued, eating bread we had made the night before with beer and an onion.
“Baboon to your left,” Ben shouted ahead of me on the trail. I swung up my NikonD60 and snapped away, dreaming of a big zoom lens. The black monkeys bared their massive teeth and began trotting towards Ben through the trees. I ran alongside, yelling a warning. I counted three, and then saw Ben stopped in his tracks facing a big tree on a river bed. A cliff face hung over a copse of trees, and in their combined shadows flittered dark shapes. More baboons: a whole troop. Two large ones began climbing the cliff above us, the three runners swung around to the larger group and more were coming down from the hills.
“Let’s make a plan,” Ben stated while I released shutter after shutter.
He then bolted through a gap in the baboon lines. Four baboons from the hills loped behind, watching us leave as we climbed out of the darkness and farther up the river. Later, we found baby baboon footprints in the mud, maybe explaining the troop’s aggresiveness.
Following the yellow footprint markers, we climbed for three and a half hours up the Naukluft. Our shirts were soaked, our water bottles emptying fast and the bread all gone. We reached the halfway marker on the beginning of the plateau. After switchbacks, we came to a large pile of stones. Butterflies and wildflowers covered the stubbly top of the mountain. Green ridges and valleys stretched out on all horizons: it was as if the Fish River Canyon could bloom. The descent saw us hastily scrambling down the rocky path, squinting for then shouting when finding yellow footprints.
On the drive out of the Naukluft park, we listened to Al Green, cooled by cold showers and happy with a slight lunch or hardboiled egg and peanut butter. A springbok jumped ahead of us on the road, tearing out down the gravel. Weary yet excited, we slowed. Our cruiser then just followed the creature, our eyes locked on the white tail bobbing and weaving in a mad dash down the road.
Somewhere north of the mountains I began thinking again: I was that tired from the sun and hike. Our destination was Solitare, a minimum of a city with a famous bakery. We pulled in, fueled up, and bought apfelstrudel, grape soda and a giant hot dog from a rotund, cheery baker. Why trust any other kind?
We settled into camp and barely stayed up to see the Milky Way, trying to ignore the screechings and offal music of the Japanese and German tourists unloading from their big bus. But before we fell asleep, Ben and I drank 750ml Tefls under the red disk of a sundowner. An old couple sat on the bench next to us, and I gestured towards the sun with my bottle.
“How many more of these do you think we have?” I asked.
“Not enough,” brother Ben replied, red glint in his eyes.
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Dispatches Africa South Deadvlei, Von Wolf's Castle and Oryx
Dispatches Africa South Deadvlei, Von Wolf's Castle and Oryx
Deadvlei, Von Wolf's Castle and Oryx
