August is out of local
school holidays, but it is in the middle of the European summer holiday and
thousands of tourists criss-cross the country in hired 4x4 bakkies with shiny,
silver canopies and roof-top tents.
Island View specialises in fishing but the Euro-tourists are looking for
the Big Five. Instead of the hire
bakkies and the overland trucks, this site hosts a handful of South African and
Namibian fishermen and incredible birdlife.
This is proved the
next morning when I see a large black bird wading in the shallows on the
opposite bank: The African Openbill. Before it arrived a black-winged stilt,
dainty with a white head and body and red legs, was foraging in the shallows. Earlier a Fish Eagle flew upriver before
landing on a mound of flattened reeds. At
lunchtime Hartlaub’s Babblers and Southern brown-throated weavers, attracted by
our cheese and biscuits, annoy my wife who prefers her birds to be at a
distance or with a nice sauce. They land on the table and on the chair
backs. One is even so bold as to land on
her shoulder.
Throughout the day,
men in Makoros pole past. Upriver I see
them pulled in close to the bank, fishing.
They fit well here, moving slowly and silently, the polers’ long, easy movements
reflecting the river’s slow, sure progress.
Tiger fish jump and sometimes the
birdsong is broken as a tourist fishing boat putters upriver. Four pied kingfishers come and go from a bush
nearby, chasing each other low across the brown water.
At this point the
water of the Zambezi has made its way from Zambia, through Angola and will
touch Botswana before it enters Zimbabwe and spills over Victoria Falls. It is Africa’s fourth longest river and the
largest African river to empty into the Indian Ocean which it does on the coast
of Mozambique.
I sit listening to the
piping whistles of the bul-buls and the trilling of a crested barbet and
gradually between the whiffs of wood smoke I catch the aroma of the loaf I’m
baking in the coals. It will go well
with the ripe camembert I have in the cool box.
My thoughts are interrupted by a marauding vervet monkey and while
chasing him I’m rewarded with a sighting, in the green canopy, of a Purple-Crested
Turaco, a striking bird with vivid
red wind ends and reminiscent of the Knysna Lourie.
A week later we are in Etosha. The stark barrenness contrasts markedly from
the lush green ribbon that follows the course of the Zambezi. The white, rocky landscape, the shimmering
glare of the pan and the sparseness of the thorny bush possesses a different,
harsher beauty. Another contrast is that the park is packed with hire bakkies
and overland trucks. At the waterholes
I feel as though I’m jostling for elbow room.
At Halali camp we choose a pitch backing on to the bush with no
neighbouring sites but that doesn’t stop a French couple from squeezing their
bakkie onto it next to us and two nights later a hire car full of young German
women from doing the same.
At the camp waterhole
a skittish black rhino is spooked by the spectators who can’t help themselves
but chat as they come and go. The animal
prances and snorts and runs at shadows. A
game warden we talk to later tells us the Black Rhino are doing well in Etosha
and that they are more likely kill each other as they battle for territory
around the waterholes, than they are to be killed by poachers.
One morning, there are
lions at the first waterhole we stop at and a spectacularly huge herd of zebra,
so large that even the elephants keep to a small corner. There are around forty vehicles parked up and
the occupants are enthralled. The
Italians in the tour bus close by seem overawed and their excited chattering
grates against the trampling and snorting of the zebra. The man in the car next to ours shakes his
head at the disturbance. “Unbelievable,”
he says as his wife reverses the car and they head for somewhere quieter. The tourists look cool in their Out of Africa
outfits bought in Milan or Rome, white silk scarves flung around their necks,
but they’re not well versed in waterhole etiquette.
I’m glad I came to
Etosha, I like its aridness, the watery haze above the pan alive with the
winter heat and the rivulets of springbok streaming in single file towards
water holes. Though I’m relieved when we
leave for less crowded locations.
Journeying first west,
through Damaraland and then south along the Skeleton Coast, we find antidotes
to the crowds of Etosha. Of these, Spitzkoppe
is one of the best. Massive domes of red
granite rise over 600 metres from the surrounding flat monochrome of the desert
and 1728m above sea level. It’s easy to
understand why this awe inspiring feature was considered a spiritual place, a
place of shamans.
Our site feels
isolated. The ablutions are a few
hundred metres away at the gate. There
is a long-drop nearby and walking back in the darkness I can see the flickering
glow of our campfire accentuating the redness of the boulders. The
comfort of the little fire and the protective boulders create the temporary
feeling of home in the vast empty landscape.
The rock art at Spitzkoppe is estimated to be between two and four
thousand years old and in the little circle of light thrown into the world by
our fire, I feel a sense of connection with all those other humans who have sat
around their fires here. Like a pilgrim
arriving at a cathedral designed to inspire awe, I feel the spiritual draw of
Spitzkoppe. I can understand how the
anomalous feature of these mountains rising dramatically from the landscape
facilitated spiritual connection for those earlier inhabitants of this area.
The next day a guide
shows us the rock art. His name is name
is Edward Auseb though his Damara name, !Kharibasen, resounds more beautifully
around the Spitzkoppe, or more appropriately, the ǂGaigul, meaning “last large
mountain before the north”. He shows us
the shamanic depiction of the “golden snake” and paintings depicting hunts and
rhino, elephants and people. In the
twenty-four hours since Eddie was last here, someone has drawn a big heart in
charcoal next to the ancients’ art.
Lenana apparently loves Paul. The
sacred quietness of Spitzkoppe does not impress itself on everyone in the same
way.
On the road south we
find other wild and peaceful places to stay.
Places away from the throngs with their guide-books. Lesser known places that, for now, will
remain quiet and secret.
