We hit the Grootderm Road along the Orange River, all the way from Alexander Bay to Cornell’s Kop, named after my favourite prospector who never found a diamond in all his sainted life – but he did write the fabulously stirring Glamour Of Prospecting. It’s a humorous travel book telling of his times in the dry land, sleeping rough and living with a constantly flatulent partner-in-crime.
We checked in at Sendelingsdrift Camp, entrance to the Ai-Ais Richtersveld Transfrontier Park. It was rather a fetching little tin and wood ensemble and we loved it but me, I didn’t love the three a.m. Fridge Cantata so much. Think howler monkeys in profusion. Add in a platoon of Russian soldiers marching on frozen ground. Then an elephant gagging on a plastic bag. I rose to kill the fridge by pulling the plug but I could not find the power source. It became like Hal the Computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Until morning, of course, when my Jules engineered the problem away.
The warden took us on a bit of a backroads drive through massive, sheer, jagged, naked, defiant mountains which glowed violet, burnt cherry, dark leather, burgundy and buckskin in the afternoon light. I just hated the scars left behind by the diamond mining operations that no amount of man-made ‘rehabilitation’ would ever make right. Zircon rules, mate. And it doesn’t cost three years’ salary, either.
We arrived in Khuboes and met Oom Andries Joseph, who said he was rather keen to feed tourists “asbrood en potbrood, vleis en stampmielies” and teach them about “Jan Twakblaar vir die pyn”. To him, having a World Heritage Site on his doorstep meant showing off the unique culture of the Richtersveld to outsiders. Khuboes Tourism was currently closed but, encouragingly, the council was advertising the post of tourism director. Oom Andries said he might be interested. I said I’d back him for the job, but he just laughed.
We took the road to Lekkersing the next day, where a delightful character called Koos Stoffel, a tall man in a cowboy hat, took us around the town to meet his friends
Oom Andries Isak, a Bosluis Baster, was draped on his front steps in full sunshine, just drinking in the day with a wide smile on his thin face. Up the road, Tannie Magrieta Cloete donned a traditional bonnet and made my heart salivate. Johanna Diergaardt, next door, sat for a portrait which showed off her amazingly Cherokee-like features while her grandson Roman kept trying to slide into the photograph. Tannie Johanna had never cut her hair.
“God doesn’t want it,” she said firmly.
Then we met Oom Joseph Fieland who looked like the actor/director John Huston and his bonneted wife, Tannie Regina, and they told us about the goating life on the open veld.
At the Uys home we learnt about the history of these amazing Baster people who were moved from thousands of kilometres away in Bushmanland to live in a forbidding world of mountain, stone and sparseness. But they adapted to the Richtersveld and made it their own, personal Beloved Place.
Now the world and its uncle was beating a path to their door, more than 50 years after society had shoved them out of sight because of their mixed blood.
Our amazing journey to the best place in South Africa ended the next morning with a drive out into the World Heritage area itself to see a veepos (stock post) in action.
Oom Kous Joseph and his wife Tannie Sarah were just finishing milking a hillside of goats when we pitched in the dawn light. Their life seemed simple and wonderful: milk goats, breakfast on tea and bread, Oom Kous walks the goats out to the veld while Tannie Sarah makes quilts and prepare the meals.
And then in the evenings, they watch the sunset over their heavenly patch, and they smile…
** South African National Parks Central Reservations: (012) 428 9111; E-mail:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4
Road Trip of Note
OK, mentally pack your bags and climb in the backseat of my bakkie. Mind the cameras. We’re going on a trip up to the Richtersveld . We’re bound to find out all manner of useful fact and useless hint and allegation. You’ll meet some dandy characters and wake up some mornings in places you’ll dream of for months afterwards.
Falling Woman
But before all that, let me tell you about the Woman Who Fell. The one we saw in Vanrhynsdorp on the way up. Jules, my wife and traveling buddy, found her outside the café at the filling station where I was doing the diesel thing with our dusty grey Isuzu, the classic 2.5l model they made back in 2003. I feel if I start now I could hit Mongolia in this beauty by Christmas – it’s been that reliable. And that’s a totally unsponsored comment.
Flower Bliss
“Jeez, you should see this woman out there,” said Jules a little breathlessly, handing me biltong, Fritos and Coca Cola – half the reason I find road travel so slimming. “She looks like she tried to French kiss a threshing machine.” The poor traveler – in the middle of Flower Tourism Bliss - had taken a bad fall somewhere up in the Richtersveld. We wanted to help, but she was well surrounded as she sat there, trying to light a cigarette with shaking hands. Now file that image away and come and meet Jopie Kotze, the Maverick Publishing Pasha of Springbok.
The Pasha
A couple hundred klicks up the pike and you find Springbok, a terribly busy and important town in the Flower Season. In the vortex of all this happy commerce is the Springbok Restaurant & Lodge. In its command centre, with a 180 degree view of the dining area, the bookshop, the reservations desk and the take-out corner, is the legendary Jopie Kotze. I like to call him Two Rings Jopie, because whenever I phone him from afar to beg for a picture copyright, a room for the night or shelf space for our books, he picks up the receiver in no time at all. Try it.
Diamonds in the Blood
Jopie Kotze, whose family blood is encrusted with the diamond legends of the Richtersveld, publishes where others fear to tread, serves a mean steak and owns yellow-and-white cottages where he can accommodate 210 tourists “if you stack them properly”.
Donkey Highway
And then it’s outta here, up on the Donkey Highway section of the N7, a quick loer-in by the Creamy Games Shop in Steinkopf, float over the delicious Anenous Pass, down the straight to Port Nolloth and whoops! Here’s a guy with his hands out looking desperate.
“I drove from Swakopmund mister but the fuse connection needed soldering and a mechanic’s coming out but I’ve got no money to pay him and please God Mister-“
When he started bringing in the Big Boss up there I stopped him with:
“How much?”
“R120.”
I gave him the bucks.
“And please mister, for my wife back there, can I have some water as well?”
Lucky him on the day. He scored a five litre bottle of still water and a handful of cash. Then he assumed the praying position again:
“I can’t believe a white man stopped for me. Normally it’s only the blacks…”
Welcome to ‘Port’
Port Nolloth usually looks like a gambling den under a grey tablecloth of mist. Today it looked like a gambling den in bright sunlight. We made straight for the Bedrock Cottages and found ourselves in quarters that quicken the seafarer’s blood. It looked and felt like Robert Louis Stevenson and Captain Kidd lived next door.
Without further ado we went drinking with the Lorentz family and heard diamond divers’ stories that should be in a book. If ever I can make it through a session with Geoff and Lara sober, I’ll think about it. Then we met a woman whose brother has the kind of disease that could put me out of business.
The Lovely Lara
“He’s one of only three people in the world who has epileptic fits if he’s exposed to ink in any form,” she told us over a wine or two. “Books, newspapers, it don’t matter.”
Diamond Dreams
After yet another awesome session with the diamond diving world of Port Nolloth and a deep sleep at nice & nautical Bedrock, we chugged on north to the mining town of Alexander Bay, where men still dream of diamonds and the pigeons fly scared. The birds are anxious because, since they were bust ferrying little pouches of diamonds out of the restricted area, they’ve been shot out of the skies over Alex Bay.
Cornell’s Kop
Then we hit the Grootderm Road along the Orange River, all the way to Cornell’s Kop, named after my favourite prospector who never found a diamond in all his sainted life – but he did write the fabulously stirring Glamour Of Prospecting, currently being published by you-know-who back in Springbok. It’s a humorous travel book telling of his times in the dry land, sleeping rough and living with a constantly flatulent partner-in-crime. The road is ostriches, dirt and diamond mines all the way, with a bit of winding river thrown in and massive, purple mountains across the water in Namibia.
Monkeys in the Fridge
So then we checked in at Sendelingsdrift Camp, entrance to the Ai-Ais Richtersveld Transfrontier Park. It was rather a fetching little tin and wood ensemble and we loved it but me, I didn’t love the three a.m. Fridge Cantata so much. Think howler monkeys in profusion. Add in a platoon of Russian soldiers marching on frozen ground. Then an elephant gagging on a plastic bag. I rose to kill the fridge by pulling the plug but I could not find the power source. It became like Hal the Computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Until morning, of course, when Jules engineered the problem away.
The thing about our digs was it stood right next door to where the Woman Who Fell fell. We picked up the story, and it turned out she was on a seniors’ tour, had a drink or two, stepped off the balcony, fell and kept on falling until she hit the fence below. She was found there the next morning. A couple of degrees colder and it could have been tickets for the unfortunate woman.
Me for Warden
The park itself is a dream from another world. Quite simply, you could make me warden here anyday. As long as I had Jules in HR to help me with the people side of things. We drove the Isuzu over most of the park, chugging bravely but resolutely up the daunting stony passes and perving at the sights down below. We fell down on the ground and had belly safaris with the succulent plants that were out on parade all over the white rocky surfaces. We found the Hand of God stone, the Akkedis Pass and by the time we reached the Koeroegab Plains, we simply had to stand out in a field of yellow flowers and have a good old snog. There. I said it. I often kiss my wife on trips. I sometimes kiss my blerry old Isuzu too.
Pearson’s Aloe
Up on the Helshoogte, we found the rare Pearson’s Aloe standing in its multitudes like an army of scruffy old Emperor penguins about to invade the valley below. I was totally sold on the place.
Burgundy Mountains
And then the warden took us on a bit of a backroads drive through massive, sheer, jagged, naked, defiant and (did I say massive? Gi-normous) mountains which glowed violet, burnt cherry, dark leather, burgundy and buckskin in the afternoon light. I just hated the scars left behind by the mining operations that no amount of man-made ‘rehabilitation’ would ever make right. Zircon rocks, mate. And it doesn’t cost three years’ salary, either.
Hendrix & Rummy
Rain fell hard that evening. You don’t want to be caught in a flash flood out here, because then you’ll quickly have to make the mines your best buddy in an emergency. They’re the only real medical act around. That night we listened to Jimi Hendrix on Radio Sonder Grense as the rain took up the back-beat on the tin roof. We played Killer Rummy and toasted the best dry wilderness in all the world.
‘Jan Twakblaar’
We arrived in Khuboes and met Oom Andries Joseph, who said he was rather keen to feed tourists “asbrood en potbrood, vleis en stampmielies” and teach them about “Jan Twakblaar vir die pyn”. To him, having a World Heritage Site on his doorstep meant showing off the unique culture of the Richtersveld to outsiders. Khuboes Tourism was currently closed but, encouragingly, the council was advertising the post of tourism director. Oom Andries said he might be interested.
Locomotive Breath
We took lodgings in the community guest house just outside town in a grove of trees. The manager lady had given us a kettle-bucket because she said the geyser was on the blink. I think she just didn’t feel like trekking out to the guest house every day to check four unit geysers because she later assured me they were all on the fritz. Oh well. That night a locomotive breath of wind galed down the valley, and I had to keep looking outside to see if the bakkie was on its way to Kansas – but it held firm.
Lekkersing Cowboy
We took the road to Lekkersing the next day, where a delightful character called Koos Stoffel, a tall man in a cowboy hat, took us around the town to meet his friends. I reckon he could make a good living as a tour guide, just by introducing his buddies to the outside world. Koos helped us unpack the kitchen sink from the bakkie to our digs and said My, you folks travel heavy as he dragged my camera bag in unbidden. His eyes widened as I carried it back out again.
“Leaving so soon?”
Lekkersing People
Oom Andries Isak, a Bosluis Baster, was draped on his front steps in full sunshine, just drinking in the day with a wide smile on his thin face. Up the road, Tannie Magrieta Cloete donned a traditional bonnet and made my heart glad. Then she told us about roosterkoek and melkkluitjies and I began to salivate. Johanna Diergaardt, next door, sat for a portrait which showed off her amazingly Cherokee-like features while her grandson Roman kept trying to slide into the photograph. Tannie Johanna had never cut her hair.
“God doesn’t want it.”
Then we met Oom Joseph Fieland who looked like the actor/director John Huston and his bonneted wife, Tannie Regina, and they told us about the goating life on the open veld.
Slate Mine
Our day ended at sunset on a slate mine overlooking the town, with Koos Stoffel showing us patterns in the stone and the Jantjie Berend plants you use for stomach complaints. And I thought about roosterkoek and melkkluitjies and boerewors done just right and asbrood and potbrood and stampmielies and such. And I thanked God for Jantjie Berend.
Eksteenfontein Tourism Team
The lovely Volenti van der Westhhuizen of the Eksteenfontein Tourism Info Centre didn’t seem to notice my filthy shorts the next day, after I had been on a belly safari on a quartzite hill, getting close and personal with some sexy succulents and destroying dozens of others with my ass in the process. Ah well. Someone always dies for good art.
Volenti had a police dog called Sipho that followed her everywhere she went. Sipho lay waiting outside the Uys home while we sat inside learning about the history of these amazing Baster people who were moved from thousands of kilometres away in Bushmanland to live in a forbidding world of mountain, stone and sparseness. But they adapted to the Richtersveld and it had come damn close to a perfect place for them.
“Now they can’t get enough of us.”
Now the world and its uncle was beating a path to their door, more than 50 years after society had shoved them out of sight because of their mixed blood.
“In the old days whites wanted nothing to do with us,” said one Dirkie Uys with a satirical smile. “Now they can’t get enough of us, it seems.” The last time anyone in Eksteenfontein saw so much action from the outside was when they filmed the famous Isuzu ad (“that blerrie bakkie”) in the village and everyone was creative director for a day.
Stock Post
Our amazing journey to the best place in South Africa ended the next morning with a drive out into the World Heritage area itself to see a veepos (stock post) in action.
Oom Kous Joseph and his wife Tannie Sarah were just finishing milking a hillside of goats when we pitched in the dawn light. For the entire interview and photo shoot, Tannie Sarah clutched onto a small pail of milk. Their life seemed simple and wonderful: milk goats, breakfast on tea and bread, Oom Kous walks the goats out to the veld while Tannie Sarah makes quilts and prepare the meals. The recent highlight of their lives happened when they were bussed across to Namibia to teach the Namas there how to make matjieshuise out of reeds and wooden frames.
Wilderness
But when you go out there and visit them, just look around at the marvelous wilderness they breathe in every day of their lives. And hope like hell the developers of this world haven’t read this article yet…
Enquiries:
** Port Nolloth: Bedrock Guest House: 083 259 8865 or 017 851 88 65/71
** South African National Parks Central Reservations: (012) 428 9111; E-mail:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
** Richtersveld side of the Park: (027) 831 1506
** Khuboes Info: (027) 8312 095
** Lekkersing Info: (027) 851 8580
** Eksteenfontein Info; (027) 851 7108
A World Heritage Site has been declared in the Richtersveld, a barren but beautiful region of South Africa. A road trip through this dramatic landscape is a delight for hard-core ‘encounter travellers’
