To the Lighthouse

There's no doubt about it: I've been spoiled for South African travel of late, with trips to both the north west border *and* the furthest south, within a short month.  Amelia of Mahindra fame, the soon-to-be-doctor, also known in the Indian way as Amelia Madam, met me at Cape Town airport sporting her new "practical crop", as she calls it.  After a night at the international student medics' residence at Tygerberg Hospital, we meandered east along the beautiful coast to L'Agulhas, named from the Portuguese, the 'Cape of Needles' so feared by seafarers.

After a sunset wander around the famous lighthouse, we went for dinner in the Struisbaai harbour. Here we negotiated with the wind and attempts by a group of red-faced bikers to pick us up (but of course! -- any women unaccompanied by men must be there for the taking!)  Later we found our way down the long dark gravel road to Rhenosterkop, on which we met a better match - a regal spotted eagle owl. It graced us for some time on the road in the glare of our headlights, at one point bobbing its head at its own shadow.

Rhenosterkop is an old settler farm dating to the 18th century which has been bought and renovated by SAN Parks. In 1979, the apartheid government made the farm a national monument, though it's easy to miss the plaque. It is a set of dwellings that would have (and perhaps still does) engendered pride in those for whom the ideology of the robust pioneer spirit was so important.  The original homes were made only of local materials and timber salvaged from shipwrecks, of which this coastline boasts many.  

It must have been a hell of a lonely and challenging existence.  A bit of online research tells me that our cottage (Number 2) was a shepherd's house dating to circa 1930s. When this particular shepherd was a child, apparently he tried to fly by attaching flamingo feathers to his arms and jumping out of a tree. He was crippled for the rest of his life and was called Jan Mankie. Today the cottage is quiet, comfy and very cosy, even as the the hard edge of winter draws in -- and fully equipped for disabled access, which I'm sure Jan Mankie would have approved of.

We hiked for several hours through the limestone fynbos. The park is a shelter for all sorts of endangered plants, frequented by shiny sunbirds. Over 100 fynbos species are found only in this area, and 29 of them are rare or threatened.  The Lemon Buchu is amongst the latter, in its last remaining substantial habitat; it is almost fluorescent green, leaping out against the lavenders and greys of the two oceans that meet in the distance.  Amelia Madam is not accustomed to looking out for snakes on the streets of London, so good thing she had me around to spot the Skaapsteker (Psammophylax rhombeatus, allegedly of a 'gentle disposition'), as well as a large, vibrant and much more poisonous puff adder.  

 Back at the harbour, we consumed seafood platters with voluminous quantities of batter and sauce, whilst watching the returning fishermen and billowing stingrays hovering in the shallow waters.  We bought an icecream from two ladies who sell sweets to holidaying children in a blue van from a bygone era.  Struisbaai has the longest natural beach in the southern hemisphere, a total of fourteen kilometers.  We only caught a small corner of it, together with a scarlet sunset.

This southernmost tip of Africa has long been a global corner.  Ships and voyagers have died all along this coast since the 17th century, a time when elephants used to roam these parts too. The ships were from Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Britain, on their voyages to and from the east.   Amongst the vast array of finds displayed in Bredasdorp's Shipwreck Museum, sandwiched amongst some silver cutlery and Indian coins, is a small and patient Buddha which receives no mention by the curators.  A long journey it made, and we debated its possible origins.

We stopped in neighbouring towns. In Napier we found some ex-Rhodesians from Bulawayo on the side of the road selling stamps and honey. Their now-grown children weren't interested in stamps, they said. I seized an incongruous postcolonial opportunity to buy a first day cover (dated 1982, during the bad old days of South Africa's 'homelands') featuring black boy scouts in the Transkei. Whatever next! A few doors down, we met an eccentric purveyor of pewter chessmen and collector of militaria. His bunker-esque basement holds everything from Queen Mary and Jan Smuts to the SADF and the Third Reich. I wondered what Amelia Madam made of his multiple references to the British royals.

Our next much-awaited destination was Arniston, named after the British East India ship which ran aground on the 3rd May 1815, bizarrely exactly 199 years ago to the day on which we arrived. The entire fishing village, with its atmospheric whitewashed fishermen's cottages is a heritage site, known interchangeably as Kassiesbaai and Waenhuiskrans.  

I found our accommodation on Gumtree, and our hostess B. was at first perplexed that we were whites who wanted to stay in "the coloured aria".  She must have repeated this phrase at least 3 times the first time we spoke, and must have been even more perplexed when this made me laugh out loud.  After several preliminary phonecalls, B. met us on the side of the road in her green Corsa before we followed her into the newer part of the small and slightly shabby 'township'.  Her great-grandfather was a Khoi man who married a white woman, and her grandfather was the first man to own a fishing boat in Arniston.  Notable features in her house include the only picture on the wall - a black-and-white photograph of the village at a time when it was populated by only the coloured community, a statement of identity and belonging.  And an innovate soap dish in the shower made from a Flora margarine tub with crafted drainage holes, nailed to the wall.

After a brief but glorious early morning swim on 'the coloured beach', we drove inland to Franschhoek through canvases of hills and valleys which made me realise that artist Pierneef's landscapes are not stereotyped but entirely accurate in both detail and spirit. Lest we romanticise too much, though, (another famous artist) Kentridge has pointed out that the nationalist work of early white landscape painters such as Pierneef "emerged only after "puffs of gunsmoke" had silenced debate over who controlled the land"(*full article here).

Water, Stone & Metal: The Orange River

To find peace, one must travel down a river with strangers, almost to where the river meets the sea.  It sounds like a mythical edict, a rite of passage.  And so it was.  The story starts some 15 hours drive from Johannesburg.  In the far north west of South Africa, on the lowest seam of the Namib desert, the Orange/Gariep River has already gathered together all its known waters from across this troubled country. Blended into a slightly muddy cocktail, the powerful stream winds its final 300 kilometres through ribbons of ancient purple hills that smell and sound of metal.  It is expeditiously rinsed and cleansed by reedbanks and sands along the way, and at its confluence with Namibia's famous Fish River, its temperature drops from tropical to fresh.  Most unusually for this region, there are no crocodiles - and by c.1925 the last hippo were shot out by our settler forebears.  

We were a funny group. Three professors of the social sciences (a considerable bias towards anthropology and sociology), a web developer with a snowboarding qualification, and the many-hats me.  We are all tied together, one way or another, by Namibia.  During the journey we uncovered multiple other intersections in our pasts and kin, despite geographic and generational differences: among others, the fall of Tobruk during WWII, the Zimbabwean bush war, southern African Jewish intellectual networks, and those anthropological darlings, the San.

The interesting thing about travelling with strangers is sometimes, of course, what you find out about them afterwards. The Professor of Fewest Words, for example, turns out not only to have published multiple novels and poetry collections, but to be the captain of the Namibian spear-fishing team, along with national colours for horse racing.  I kid you not. Our guide was unexpectedly a former dancer, nimble on his feet, with the energy of a thousand dragons and an infectious passion for his work.  The culinary high point was seeing him produce a gluten-free chocolate cake in a cast-iron bakepot on the fire, on the beach-like sandbank.  His best friend is an Australian cattle dog (the only other female on the trip) who travelled as the figurehead on his kayak the entire way, metre-high rapid waves and all. 

It was full moon on our second day. We departed the vast grape farms of Aussenkehr as dark fell, and paddled as the moon rose - so tremendously bright that the other river-goers were completely illuminated, as if in the path of a spotlight.  Some time later we docked in the stickiest of mud, up to mid-calf.  Bathing in the warm and earthy Orange under the light of the moon before snuggling into one's sleeping bag under the stars is the stuff of make-believe and she-wolves.  At dawn the moon was still luminous, crisp and high. It surprises me that the sun and the moon can appear in one vista, separated by so little sky.

I confess to a revitalised romance with nature: the extreme beauty of the early mornings (somewhat interrupted by having to break camp and load the kayaks each day), the deep quiet of the nights and, especially in the latter part, the liberating sensation of desolation.  Slicing the water repeatedly with the paddle, feeling the ache of the shoulders, taking in new panoramas minute by minute, anticipating the next rapids with a shot of adrenalin -- all of this helps to focus and free the mind.  The routine of camp soon becomes clear: to find a place to sleep, to set one's tent if one wants, to sort out one's belongings from the wetness of the day, to consider the best time to swim after taking on the dust of the shore. Just the right amount of brain activity.

After weaving 220 kilometres among the jagged charcoal, rust and pinkish hills, we reached Sendelingsdrift border post.  Beyond this point, river and land access is tightly restricted thanks to powerful mining interests, for these alluvial soils are rich in the stones that 'are forever'. Further inland, we saw the remnants of other prospectors who have already tried and failed.  Driving back to base camp on the Namibian side, but for a few strokes of green, one wouldn't know that a mighty river carves its way through this dramatically rugged and apparently inhospitable landscape.

The waters of the Orange have drawn enthusiasts for millenia.  Near our base camp close to Vioolsdrift, there are ancient petroglyphs, or engravings, carved into the black dolomite by southern Africa's earliest inhabitants.

They reportedly date to around 2500 years old, though some suggest they are even older. Interviews with /Xam San informants by Bleek and Lloyd in the 1870s suggest that engravings enhanced the legendary and ritual significance of particular places in the landscape. And near those too are the farms and often unnamed graves of hardy Afrikaner settlers, many those of children.  This land is a curious mix of bountiful and unforgiving.  

* With thanks to my fellow travellers for some of the photos here.