Sunday, September 21, 2014

The Crowds and the Quiet

A version of this story appeared in the Sunday Times Travel Weekly - 21 September 2014


The crescent moon and a star are twinned by their reflection in the wide Zambezi River.  Crickets chirp and frogs burp on the river bank below the camp.  In the distance an owl calls.  As I sit by our campfire, the horizon loses the last sliver of light and it is peaceful being the only tent in the campsite.  I am camping at Island View Lodge, a quiet location 14 kilometres east of Katima Mulilo in the eastern Caprivi and a good place to pause between busier places.

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 Ç‚Gaigul, 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.