THE FIRST SAFARI

We set off from Robertson, Cape Province, South Africa in Susan’s Opel sedan. Two women and four children, Jacques, Shaun, Michele and Ryan. I can’t remember their exact ages but the youngest was two and the oldest around nine. Our destination was the Northern Cape some 574 kilometres north set in the vastness of the Kalahari desert.

Nowadays it is called the Kgaligadi desert and is not a desert in the strictest sense of the word as it receives too much rain; some 5 to 10 inches annually. Early settlers called it the thirstland.

This desert is part of the 970,000 square mile Kalahari Basin that encompasses nearly all of Botswana and more than half of Namibia reaching southwards into the Northern Cape and Namaqualand. The Kalahari sand dunes are the largest expanse of sand on earth. This desert is home to the famous black maned lions and many other species such as the Gemsbok or Oryx an antelope ideally suited to the dry conditions. The Gemsbok has a carotid rete that acts much like a radiator and keeps its temperature down in this hot environment.

Our route took us across the karoo, a semi desert, on gravel roads through Calvinia where these days they have an annual festival at the end of August celebrating farming with livestock. August is the beginning of spring when the veld bursts into a kaleidoscope of colour. Food stalls abound with their specialty, sheep heads on the menu!

Onwards to Kenhardt. Along the road the rocks were black from the heat and Kokerbooms were silhouetted against the horizon. The San used to make their arrows from these strange trees. Here we stayed in a municipal flat and that evening the stars were like diamonds in the sky.

The following early morning in the bitter cold we took the children to see the famous Verneuk Pan (the word means trickery) where Donald Campbell attempted to break the land speed record on his famous Napier-Campbell Blue Bird.

Donald had a stressful journey to the pan as he lost his briefcase with important papers in it. Then he crash landed his aeroplane into a tree near Calvinia. Willem Louw was charged with the task of clearing the pan where puffadders and scorpions abounded. The temperature could rise to 42C in the shade. The track was supposed to be 16 miles long directly east to west and looked straight into the rising sun.

On the day of the Flash in the Pan attempt as it was named, was planned a tortoise was removed from the strip and named Blue Bird! After a few attempts with only one set of tyres left Donald took on the 5 kilometre (3 miles) record reaching 203 miles per hour (325 km). Donald eventually became the first man to exceed 300 miles per hour in Utah on land.

I can’t find the picture but well I remember the four children bundled up in winter woolies stand with the vast deserted pan behind them.

We then headed north to cross the Orange River. The River is called the Gariep these days, being the San name for it. It rises in Lesotho where it is called the Senqu and travels 193 kilometres to its mouth between the towns of Oranjemund and Alexander bay on the west coast of South Africa forming a border between Namibia and South Africa.

The river has many islands, some inhabited most irrigated and planted with vines. The canals that irrigate the lands wander in and out leading into Upington, the town that is the centre of this area. Upington harks back to 1870 when a chieftain from the Hottentot clan wanted his people to learn how to read and write. He appealed to the Cape Government for a mission station at Olyfenhoutsdrift and the Rev. Christiaan Schroder was sent to teach the people.

Rev. Schroder realized the potential of the river for irrigation and together with Japie Lutz lay building foundations and hand dug irrigation canals some of which are still there today. Later AD Lewis was the brains behind the canal system that supports this area along which grow vines for raisins and wine.

We took a photo of the kids standing on one of the bridges of the river, then climbed up to the Tier mountain, meaning leopard mountain with a view of the canal system and its vineyards. We stayed in an old farmhouse on Kanoneiland the largest river island in South Africa, a patchwork of vineyards and winding roads. We stayed in an old farmhouse with a communal kitchen and let the children lose to run wild while Susan and I had a sundowner or two.

The following day we took the children to Keimoes where we stopped to see the still working Persian water wheel used to keep the water moving along the canals in the old days. Onwards west to the Aurabies Falls in the Augrabies National Park on the Orange River where the water tumbles down steep rocky chasms to fall around 56 metres. The original Khoi name was Ankoerebis, meaning place of great noise.

Pofadder was our next stop and from there we visited Pella.

Pella is a mission station that has the most amazing Catholic Cathedral  built in the mid 1880’s by French missionaries, J.M. Simon and Leo Wolf whose graves lie in the grounds. These Fathers knew nothing of building and consulted their enclyclopedie des Arts et Metiers which contained details of how to construct a building.

Within two years they finished it. It took more than 200 loads of sand, 400 wagon loads of stones, 200 000 bricks that they made themselves, 350 bags of slaked lime and hundreds of wagonloads of willow wood. Today this elegant sandy-toned Cathedral still stands as a tribute to the men of the order of St. Francis de la Sales.

When we arrived a nun welcomed us and took us into the wonderful building telling the story to the children. The mission grows dates and we left with a packet of these juicy fruits.

On impulse we decided to go to Onseepkans. This little settlement on the Orange River serves as a border post between Namibia and South Africa with traffic moving between Keetmanshoop and Pofadder.

Not a wise decision with a low slung sedan! The gravel road was rough, and taking a side track to see if we could get near the river we ended up in a of cul de sac, the sand too thick to reverse. Ahead lay a huge boulder and there was nothing for it but to drive onto this boulder in order to turn around! Full marks to the Opel although the undercarriage took some hammering as well as my nerves! The kids of course thought it very exciting! This called for a stop and a gin and tonic for Susan and a vodka for me!

So ended our first journey that left us with a taste and enthusiasm for more such adventures that did indeed follow over the years.