Rare Richtersveld
A canyon hike that only happens when it’s raining and a self-taught biologist born from the desert sand
MANY YEARS AGO I HEARD ABOUT A MYSTICAL PLACE, DEEP IN THE DESERT, WHERE WATER HAS HEWN A TOWERING CHASM INTO THE RUGGED QUARTZITES OF THE OEMSBERG MOUNTAINS, AND STILL TRICKLES FROM THE HIGH CLIFF-TOP TO LAND IN THE DESERT SAND OF A MAGICALLY ENCIRCLED AND SILENT CAMPSITE. I’VE WANTED TO CAMP THERE EVER SINCE
The Oemsberg Mountains are among the most remote in South Africa. And among the driest. Port Nolloth itself is a far-flung, windswept huddle of low buildings, clinging to the inhospitable western edge of our country. But itʼs still a full dayʼs travel from there to reach the end of the track and come within a dayʼs hiking distance of the Oemsberg Amphitheatre.
Iʼve heard, too, of Pieter van Wyk. Pieter is a surprisingly unusual character. Born and raised in this north-western corner of the country, he is a selftaught botanist, speaker of several indigenous languages and intimately connected to this land. Pieter has three tattoos up his arm – of the three new plant species he has discovered here – and heʼs keeping space for more.
Our journey into Pieterʼs world is a rare opportunity. Rare because for the last six years there has been insufficient rain to make a hiking trip into these mountains feasible. Rare because we witnessed the waterfall of the Oemsberg Amphitheatre in flow and swam in several precious, desert waters. Rare because we were met in these mountains by a wild, talkative botanist, with unusual insight into this unique botanical wonderland.
We first meet Pieter in the cobbled stone coolth on the tourist centre stoep in Sendelingsdrift. Pieter is the one wearing white wellington boots, a footwear choice that strikes me as odd for the desert. He is wiry and dark-skinned, from time in the sun. His look is half moustached konstabel, half Bedouin. Below us, the wide, lazy brown of the Orange River slides slowly by, in contrast to Pieterʼs bubbling enthusiasm for where he is sending us. Pieter canʼt join us as the local guide because the short-lived effects of a wetter winter make it imperative that he is out there from dawn to dusk, recording the intricacies of plant distribution across the vast and rugged mountains that form the southern boundary of the Richtersveld National Park.
His hike briefing is a cascade of enticing place names – Zebrawater, Koeskopfontein, Dreunbult, Gannakouriep. It includes route information and advice, the location of springs and water caches, and tidbits of interesting information. His little trail book, available from the tourist desk, collates the information in a more conventional way. Pieter will meet us in the mountains. He points to a remote slope on the map where we are likely to encounter him at the end of our second day on the trail.
The Venstervalle Hiking Trail is Pieterʼs passion play – a script that unfolds in four acts over four days, and a creative masterpiece for those of us who are
profoundly moved by vast, rugged and unspoilt landscapes. His other creative outputs are in an entirely different genre – scientific papers detailing the taxonomic wonders of this place.
Well-briefed, we drive across the arid interior of the park to Hakkiesdoring, the hikersʼ camp located where the plains meet the imposing wall of mountains, where the parkʼs road network fades away, where further exploration is confined to foot travel, and where real wilderness begins. The Oemsberg Mountains are finally within my reach but they are for tomorrow. Sitting around the fire, we look back across the Springbokvlakte to the warm glow of evening light illuminating the upper ridges of the Tatasberg. Early tomorrow, the sunʼs first light will illuminate the huge, angled slabs of red Rosyntjieberg quartzite on the skyline, enticing us towards them.
The trail starts up the dry course of the Gannakouriep River and enters the mountains through Pieterʼs Gates of Narnia. We scramble up a side gorge to discover our first desert mountain spring, Zebrawater, and we lunch in the sandy shade of a cliff.
As Pieter has promised, the jumble of quartzite slabs rise around us. The boulders, strewn across the streambed, grow in size. The gorge narrows. If I did not know from the map, I would think it ends in the sheer wall of cliffs in front of us. But there is a narrow, unlikely passage. And an entrance.
The Oemsberg Amphitheatre perfectly epitomises presence of place. It is everything I have imagined. I lie in the cool sand of its rugby-field-sized floor, to the soft echo of dripping water, and gaze through its wide porthole to the sky above. Being a rock climber I cannot resist exploring higher and I am rewarded
The plains meet the IMPOSING WALL OF MOUNTAINS, where the park’s road network fades away, where further exploration is confined to foot travel, WHERE REAL WILDERNESS BEGINS
with an eagle-eye view of my fellow campers enclosed beneath me, and a magical, silently-echoing exploration into the almost inaccessible gorge feeding the water that falls to the amphitheatre floor, far below.
The blue porthole of sky is replaced by a black one, studded with stars. Before dawn, head torches cast beams of light across the floor and walls of the amphitheatre. We will tackle Dreunbult while the early morning angle of the sun still covers it in cool shadow.
Our morning traverses high, undulating mountain valleys, recklessly decorated with flowers. These mountains are an island of higher rainfall within a desert sea of extreme aridity and are home to the richest desert flora in the world, which includes an array of very rare, endemic plant species. In the little shady thicket of trees around Modderfontein – where we lunch and fill our bottles for the afternoonʼs ascent up Langbult – we find a delicate blue doveʼs egg resting on the ground.
To meet Pieter at Venstervalle, where we overnight, is much more than to simply meet an intense, wandering botanist in the desert. It is to really meet this place. It is to meet the tiny, rare Conophytums or Bobejaan toointjies, the strange, child-like rock art in the overhang near the falls, the taxonomic secrets of the little oasis at Koeskopfontein, and a plant species that may still be unknown to science. It is to meet a true endemic of this place.
The beauty in plant taxonomy is mostly lost on me.
I love being among the plant inhabitants of pristine landscapes. I take notice of the unusual ones. I admire the beautiful ones. But I do not need to know their lineage. Iʼm therefore more interested in his relationship with this land and in how he has transcended the confines of the conservative culture in which he grew up.
When Pieter talks about his grandmother, his eyes have the same sparkle they do when he talks about the plants of the mountains in which his ancestors lived. He has shown us old fields up the valley, last tilled many decades ago, a rusting plough, the ruins of the simple, impossibly remote farmhouse in which they must have eked out a harsh living. Pieter's grandmother, he tells me, was a siener (seer). She was the member of his family with whom he most connected, and she is the inspiration for his own unusual path through life. I sense that Pieter would have talked all night if he could have, but there are tired hikers already in their beds under the stars.
Day three starts with a spectacular sunrise coffee spot that Pieter has organised for us along the trail. Later, at the top of a rise, before we reach Godʼs Window, Pieter leaves us for the urgency of new taxonomic discoveries. He uses the Nama farewell, !Gâise !gû re. Journey well.
Bababaddens, our lunch destination, is not a spring. It is a sculpted slab of smooth quartzite into which the sporadic flow of a small desert stream has patiently worn a deeply grooved chain of potholes. These are the caretakers of deep, clear pools of
precious water that they somehow shelter from the powerful, desiccating forces of desert evaporation. And they are beyond wonderful to swim in on a hot day on the trail.
Pieterʼs sense of what is adventurously possible here is probably a little above your average hikerʼs. The trail map shows an optional route down the Armanshoek Gorge as ʻtemporarily closedʼ. The route requires, among other things, finding and crawling through the narrow, hidden entrance into the dark of Reinhardt se Gat to descend a vertical section of the gorge. Unfortunately, the expense of putting in ladders thwarted Pieterʼs aspirations for sharing these extraordinary places. But the bold mountaineering types in our group enjoy an exploratory side trip down the Gat and into the jumbled, vertical, quartzitic world of the Armanshoek Gorge, while the rest of our party lazes at Bababaddens.
What our next point on the journey, Panorama, lacks in terms of inspirational name, it more than makes up for in panoramic delivery, perched on the edge of the steep drop-off overlooking the wide Armanshoek Valley below. We are gratefully distracted from the steepness of the descent by a small gathering of halfmense along the path. We mingle with them, us a shabby bunch in comparison, unshaven and dirty in three-day-old hiking clothes, whereas they are like Nama churchgoers in their Sunday best. Iʼve met these halfmense of the Richtersveld on other trips but Iʼve never before seen them in the full flower of their crimson headdress.
By the end of the descent, our party is exhausted. A dry, dusty desert wind is gusting. Our water is all but done. Pieter has left a water cache at the veepos for which we must turn downstream but it seems an unappealing camp option, out on the windswept flats. And so we turn upstream into the gorge instead, to look for the Armanshoek Spring. We are well rewarded and replenish our water at dusk among the giant arum lilies that shelter the spring and we settle for the night in a protected spot under trees in a thicket at the edge of the dry watercourse.
Our last day is long and, because we descend to the plains below, hot. The final afternoon down the dry Gannakouriep River is much longer than we remember it from the way in. But the vagaries of memory have a pleasant surprise for us as well – a granite enclosed rock pool of deep, cool water that makes the difference between an unrelenting slog and a refreshed, inspired finish.
The forerunners of our party are out ahead. And so we arrive in the evening light to a welcoming cooler box of cold beer and a circle of comfortable camping chairs set out in the riverbed around a flaming fire, for a final, celebratory night together under desert stars.
We miss it on the way in but my wife, Sandra, and I make sure, as we exit the gates of Narnia, to kiss under the arching bough of the Shepherds Tree that crosses the path. Itʼs easy, with hearts full from four days of wild beauty and inspiration, to fully believe Pieterʼs lore that in doing so, our love will last forever. Or if not forever, at least as long as the nearly two billion year-old Rosyntjieberg quartzite.