Cape West Coast
For a remote surfing, 4×4ing, wild camping time, this desolate coast ticks all the right boxes – but mining threatens to make it a no-go area
It was a photo that inspired the trip. A photo in an international surfing magazine of a scraggly bush with a peg number 15 in the foreground, and a grinding right barrel peeling off in the background. The caption indicated simply that it was somewhere on the West Coast of South Africa. Sebastian had the photo on his phone and he was on a mission to find ʻCamp 15ʼ. Alexander Bay, at the mouth of the Orange River, seemed the obvious place to start looking.
Iʼd always wanted to drive from the northwestern tip of South Africa, slowly southwards as close to the sea as the sandy tweespoor and mining concessions would allow. When the guys from Amandla Surf Foundation returned late last year from a three-week recce trip with reports of waves, but also of rampant mining expansion, I felt it was time to go see for myself. Sebastian Lanz, some old-time Weskus surfers and frothing 4×4 adventurers were only too keen to join me.
An old acquaintance, Gavin Craythorne has been a diamond diver along this coast for 35-odd years, and he kindly offered to give us the rundown of Alexander Bay.
Alex, particularly with a rising full moon, resembled a post-Apocalyptic setting from a Deon Meyer novel. On the beach, metal-laden deposits lent the sand a dark hue and the flooding Orange River clouded the unruly sea with brown silt. An abandoned mining plant was sequestered behind rusting barbed wire, while old coffer dams scarred the sand. ʻIf someone doesnʼt stop this soon, the whole coastline will look like this,ʼ Gavin said, pointing to slate ʻwallsʼ as far as the eye could see.
Beyond lay a wild, hauntingly beautiful, mostly unpeopled, but mineral and gem-laden coastline… and waves.
RE-INVENTED TOWNS AND RUSTING SHIPWRECKS
In a white-out fog, the once bustling mining enclave of Kleinzee, had ʻghost townʼ written all over it. But a stop at the fascinating Kleinzee Museum – and meeting the good folk there – soon dispelled this notion. Around 2013, when the ʻlastʼ diamond was collected, De Beers pulled out and sold off its assets. A cracked salt pan, jetty and derelict clubhouse bear parched testimony to the regattas once sailed on a man-made lagoon at Kleinzee Yacht Club. But the town now has 11 guesthouses, I learnt from Jeanene Jessnitz and tourism officer Herman de Vries who are championing the area as part of the Namaqualand Coastal Route initiative to help rural communities get on the tourism map.
A cracked SALT PAN, JETTY and derelict clubhouse bear parched testimony to the REGATTAS once sailed on a man-made lagoon at KLEINZEE Yacht Club
When Herman produced a handful of campsite marker pegs with numbers on them, we thought weʼd hit Camp 15 paydirt. On what was once a De Beers game farm south of the town, thereʼs wild camping on an unmined strip of magnificent coastline. Pay your fee, pick a number at the museum, then go find your perfect camp spot. A careful recce of the bays revealed lots of potential surf points, but the swell was tiny and Hermanʼs No 15 marker didnʼt quite match the one in the photo.
We headed instead to Die Houthoop, a guest and working farm where MP Veronica van Dyk has worked quirky décor marvels with rusted bric a brac and the dinner of seafood and farm fare was a feast.
Next morning we set off for the much anticipated Shipwreck Trail, a guided only route that hugs the dunes and spectacular bays for around 37km, from near Kleinzee to outside Koingnaas – and, if the talk was accurate, promised some of the best surf spots on the Namaqualand coast.
ʻRight, here comes your first sand test. Deflate tyres to 1.2 bar and turn off the traction control,ʼ instructed renowned Namaqualand guide and 4×4 expert, Dudley Wessels. We were at Samsonʼs Bak at the start of the trail. And, other than the drough-tblackened vaal vygies (grey mesemb) of this succulent Karoo biome, we couldnʼt see five metres in the fog. Itʼs the sudden arrival of this all-blanketing sea mist thatʼs partly responsible for the rusting hulks of ships dotting this strip of wave-battered coastline.
When the fog lifted a little, true to form Samsonʼs Bak showed its signature right-peeling point break. Glassy, perfect – and 5cm high! Dudley rubbed salt into our wounds by showing us pics of Samsonʼs Bak firing a few months earlier.
As we meandered the sand trails, Dudley kept in contact with our four-vehicle convoy by two-way radios, sharing tragic tales, identifying plants, including the tyre-piercing bossiecus papwielicus! and pointed out the Cape larkʼs mating ritual. We found a small left break near the rusting ribs of the Border and the guys paddled out, soon enveloped in the fog.
Even without swell, the Shipwreck Trail is high on action – and lovely lunch spots. Dudleyʼs expertise and his philosophy of ʻbetter to do it over than to overdo itʼ got us up some challenging tracks, with many lessons learnt. Nearing the end of the day-long adventure, Dudley rung off the names of surf spots – that at the right tide and swell are world class: ʻWorkshop, Trailer Bay…ʼ the kelp barely stirred.
Such is the consistency of the WAVES at Hondeklipbaai that it has been scheduled for an INTERNATIONAL SURF COMPETITION later this year
At nearby Noup, the restored diverʼs cottages were not yet operational but have since been opened again, giving surfers access to some nearby gated spots. Seb put Noup on his itinerary for the next winter swell, as we headed to Hondeklipbaai.
Such is the consistency of the waves at Hondeklipbaai that it has been scheduled for an international surf competition later this year. But for us, the sunset reflecting off a mirror sea was our welcome to the village, named after a rock that supposedly looks like a dog. Itʼs another place thatʼs reinventing itself from a mining and fishing past to tourism, but is plagued by regular water outages, joblessness and, in our case, extreme wavelessness.
We pulled into the lovely Honne-Pondokkies where Kempton Park attorneys (before lockdown) Emdi Swanepoel and her husband have combined her love of the bushveld with his love of the sea to fashion their erstwhile holiday home into a ʻsurf and turf ʼ– thatched lodge-style pondokkies with a view over the main surf break – which wasnʼt, er, breaking.
IT’S WILD, BUT YOU CAN DRIVE IT
The Namaqualand National Park, worldrenowned for its neon spring flower show, has gloriously wild campsites dotted along the rugged
coast. Boulderbaai found us searching for a small number 15 peg in impenetrable fog. We didnʼt find it – or even the boulder or baai the campsite is named after.
We did however find Spoegrivier Caves, where archaeologists have unearthed 2 000-year-old sheep bones – possibly the first evidence of domestic animals kept by the Khoi. At Skuinsklip we saw where Olympic boxer turned Nazi operator, Robey Leibbrandt landed off the yacht Kylo in 1941, on his nefarious mission to overthrow the Smuts government. And when the fog finally lifted at Kwass se Baai, the ocean had gone from zero to 10 foot overnight. Desperate, Sebastian paddled out – and was last seen being sucked out towards Rio (but returned bedraggled and exhausted an hour later having not ridden a wave).
When we showed Dudley the Camp 15 photo, he recalled seeing numbered camps south of the park. So the search ramped up after Groenrivier park gate. Many sand-sucking detours later, we spotted the first numbers, followed them in reverse order and Bingo! ʻWhere is it,ʼ I hear all you surfers ask? Well, itʼs right between Camp 14 and Camp 16. ʻSeek and ye shall find,ʼ is the mantra for West Coast surf missions.
Conditions were gnarly and the campsite exposed but we found a sheltered beach further on that Johnny pronounced to be ʻLong Beach without the crowdsʼ. Up went the tents, out came the beers, and for the next two days we traded waves with a resident pod of dolphins.
Reality hit rudely once again after Brand se Baai as the meandering sand track morphed into a hard-packed dirt highway. I ramped off the road in fright as a huge truck thundered past in a cloud
of dust, with inches to spare. Incongruous on the white beach, more yellow trucks wait; a pipe spews gravel onto a mound of tailing.
ʻNone of this was here a year ago,ʼ Johann remarks, as little sadly.
The restricted mining area at De Punt, north of the Oliphants River, forced us inland through Lutzville, then we turned coastwards again to check out the beach break at Strandfontein and the left point at Doringbaai – but the swell had gone south. So we settled in for a lekker calamari and chips and chilled sauvignon blanc at the delightful Jetty Restaurant on the pier at Doringbaai where youʼll also find an abalone farm and Fryerʼs Cove Vineyard.
Winter is best for waves on the Weskus. But who even needs waves, I mused, reflecting on the past 10 days of fun and escapades as we strolled along the jetty. North of Doringbaai, magnificent unmined cliffs ran northwards, seagulls swooped on scraps with a guttural kaa; south lay the more familiar and crowded lineups at Yo-Yos, Farmer Burgers, Elands Bay…
Fill your jerry cans, engage low gear and go find your own Camp 15 now – before it gets dug up in the insatiable quest for zircon, ilmenite, rutile and garnet.