SNEAK PEAKS A reader visits the rugged Richtersveld
Mitch Reardon has some hair-raising moments in SA’s most isolated national park
IHAD been looking forward to my first trip to Richtersveld National Park for a long time, so it was with great expectations that I set out from the town of Alexander Bay, at the mouth of the Orange River, and drove east along the river towards South Africa’s most isolated national park.
In the warm sunlight, the shadows of low clouds chased over desert plains and eroded raw rock ridges. Small trees and shrubs grew wherever roots could take hold.
On the river’s steep northern bank, in Namibia, high sand dunes edged the shoreline where the Namib Desert begins and continues unbroken for nearly 2 000km along the Atlantic coast to the Carunjamba River in Angola.
From the park’s entrance, I drove another 22km to Sendelingsdrift, on the banks of the Orange. Sendelingsdrift is also a border post and entry to the Namibian side of what is properly known as the /Ai/Ais-Richtersveld Transfrontier Park. A restored pont offers a convenient transfer across the river. At reception I was advised not to tarry as it was a three-hour drive to my camp.
“But it’s only 40km!” I protested. I soon learnt that, in the Richtersveld, distances are measured in time, not kilometres. The rough mountain passes require the driver’s full attention and progress can be painfully slow. It’s strictly 4x4 and driving in convoy is recommended. Single vehicles must agree to report back to park headquarters on departure.
Driving east from Sendelingsdrift, the first few kilometres through the Reuning diamond-mining area are on good gravel. But the park’s internal roads are either rocky or sandy single-lane farm tracks that press on across dry river beds and valleys striped with shallow drainage lines, and up and down great bergs of rock that rise abruptly.
I crossed tall ranges via Swartpoort Pass, Halfmens Pass, Penkop Pass and Akkedis (Lizard) Pass, the latter named for the hairpin bends that reminded someone of the zigzag path a lizard walks. The ascents were steep and I took them at a snail’s pace; the descents wound down into deeply incised, rugged gorges.
This country is hard on travellers. It can waylay you in a heartbeat but, always aware of the risks, I was rewarded with magnificent scenes of great sandstone crags, chiselled peaks, decomposing grey-brown granites, cone-hills, towering blocks of weathered stone, fantastic domes and glowing pyramids, wind-scarped and rain-furrowed, all tinted celestially by the waning sun.
After an exhilarating four-day stay it was time to leave. I departed on a morning of spring sunshine, with plans to cross Domorogh Pass and leave the park via the same gate through which I had entered. As I climbed, the views were impressive but what concentrated my attention was the state of the rutted track, which had deteriorated ominously.
I followed parallel tyre indents that wound up the often-steep cliffplinth and then turned precariously southward along a ledge outlined by an occasional botterboom. By now the track was really no more than a narrow defile that, as often as not, clung to the very edge of a precipitous drop.
Then I came to a boulder, bulging out from the left side of the slope and into the track. I had no option but to drive over the bottom half of the boulder, which canted the vehicle alarmingly to the right. As if that wasn’t enough, the right-wheel track had become a convenient rainwater drain, which had deepened it, increasing the vehicle’s angle of tilt. To my immediate right, the plateau fell away to clear air. The cliff was so sheer that a stone dropped out the driver’s window would have fallen 200 metres to the plains below. The verge, of course, was unprotected.
I realised I mustn’t panic or lose my nerve — a moment’s loss of concentration is all it takes. I inched forward and eased over the boulder and back onto an even keel and kept going until I found a spot where I could get out safely and sit down and cool my nerves.
Languid with relief, I lay back, enjoying the wind and sun on my skin, all intensified by the beauty of this ancient land. The rest of the crossing was uneventful, the track winding downhill through stands of aloes until it reached flat ground. — © Mitch Reardon
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A stone dropped out the driver’s window would have fallen 200m to the plains