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The Sand Rivers: 03

Retreat And Regroup.

The battle of the Hoarusib River can now be considered a draw, but I have had to
retreat south for 100 kilometres to the old German colonial fort at Sesfontein. I must
spend a day on running repairs; things need screwing back on walls, things like that.
My power inverter is shaken to pieces, which is beyond me, but the man who looks
after the fort generators makes short work of the job and my laptop will work again.
My fridge is giving trouble and I will need an engineer for that, I may find one in
Opuwo, but if not, I know a very nice man in Maun who will mend it.
Back in reasonable shape, it is time to head north once more. It is Sunday so nothing
will be open at Opuwo, I must camp just outside and wait. The Kunene Village
Campsite is a pleasant place, good level sites and clean toilets and showers. There is
a well-constructed and stocked bar, but as usual, only me for a customer so I give it a
miss this time. The next morning I will look for a repair shop that might be of use for
the fridge. It is just after 8 p.m. and the roads are lined with people going to work or
about some business or other. The other 4,000 Himba people all seem to be here.
Some have moved to western style of dress, but in the main are this dark red colour,
top to toe, and virtually naked. There are men here too, most of them are in jeans and
tee shirts and are indistinguishable from anyone else, but some are dressed very much
like the women; little skirts, ornaments about the head and upper body. They have
short hair with a curious little tail; more of a pigtail than a pony tail. These men are
going to town on horseback and they look quite fearsome. Children are streaming in
from the bush and filing into the town school, boys adorned like the men and little
girls with 2 pigtails formed at the front of the head instead of what we might expect,
at the back. Everybody is plastered with the red mud. The town has the appearance
and feel of something from the American frontier period, I drive very slowly so as not
to frighten the horses, but in minutes I am leaving town. I didnt find a repair shop.
The Last Mountain.
It is to take four more hours to haul over the last road-less mountain to the Kunene
River. The scenery is, as always, stunning but it is so very hot now and blisters form
on my hands from the incessant turning of the wheel. There are less goats now and
very few donkeys; these people have cattle which look in fine condition and mealie
(corn) fields so there is wealth, of a sort, but the begging, endearing at first, bead
bedecked pre-school children run alongside faster than I can drive, such is the road.
The only word they seem to know is sweetie! The prettiest girls will stand and say
picture, ten-dollar (about a pound) and the men folk will wave frantically as if in
trouble then shout tabac (Tobacco) These once independent people have been
changed in such a short time by the new age of the four wheel drive tourist, like
myself, and I wonder what they will become.

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One tends to lose track of the distance covered here but as I top the rise of this last
hill, the Kunene, fringed with palms lies in the distance. Beyond that, looking no
different from Namibia is Angola.
Epupa Falls.
A Himba settlement surrounds the camp gate which appears locked and is topped with
razor wire and as I wait for someone to come and open it, a boy of about four years
old runs from the crowd, opens the gate with a flourish, and he shouts Sweetie! I
dont have any and he certainly isnt getting any tabac but he keeps smiling, doesnt
seem to mind. If he got as much as he demanded, he would be a very fat and
toothless little boy. The palm forest seems to line the entire river and is about thirty
metres wide before giving way to the desert scrub; I can get my caravan completely
under and in the shade. I am about 3 metres from the top of the cauldron as the river
thunders and smokes into the first chasm. The falls are similar to the Victoria Falls,
in that they fall sideways into a fault, or gorge, over about a kilometre, there are many
separate drops, almost like fingers and I would say that falls are about half the size of
Victoria which is much bigger than I thought they would be. It is a little early in the
day, and a bit hot but I decide to walk the canyon length for some photos. The walk is
relatively easy and after about an hour I can get down to the base where there water is
calmer and there is a small sandy beach. I am uncomfortable by now with the heat,
there is shade and I can sit on a rock and dangle my feet in the water. As I sit there for
a while, getting very comfortable, I remember what I read in my guidebook. Whilst
hippos have been eradicated from the river (hippos kill more people in Africa than any
other animal) one should remember that the Nile crocodile is present in all African
rivers. One should only bathe in the vicinity of the falls The water is calm here, and
I am sitting on the riverbank with my feet in the water.. Or I was!
Housekeeping:
On my return, a woman who may have been Himba, but was not dressed as such
visited me. She was a woman of some years and of traditional African build. She
was barefoot, wore a headscarf and a pale blue dress that had seen better years. She
spoke only Herero or Afrikaans, of which I had neither, but it soon became clear that
she would like to do my laundry, but I have decided to leave in the morning, there will
be no time. My fridge will only work when my engine is running, at other times its
little microchip tells it that the voltage is too low and it switches off. The voltage, I
know is fine, its just off its little microchip head. Consequently, the temperature in
there varies from between zero and 20C, depending on how long I run my engine. I
have food in the fridge, mostly fruit and veg that I bought nearly three weeks ago in
Joburg, some cold meat and such from Swakopmund and it is getting to be a bit of a
swamp at the bottom. Most of what I find in there is quite horrible and is thrown
away, when I mop out the sludge and re-pack what is left including all of the dozen
eggs I bought on the first day. In the heat of Africa I dont have much of an appetite,
but make a mental note to eat better, a daily diet of cereal and bananas will need to be

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supplemented. One of my cupboards is lined with a mixture of sugar, tomato sauce
and apricot jam. I will have to clear that out too, maybe tomorrow.
During the night I awake, as one does when camped at the edge of seemingly the
loudest and biggest waterfall in the world, I consider that as I have not unhitched the
caravan, or put the jacks down, there is a gentle slope towards the river edge. I also
recall that as I had been running my engine to power the fridge, that the gears would
be in neutral. Is the handbrake on? Of course, I know it is, but I just had to go out
there and check.
Other travellers have recommended a lodge about a hundred kilometres east of here,
still on the banks of the Kunene and there is a track that follows the riverbank. On
consulting my guidebook, the author mentions that it took him three days to complete
this track, so deciding to take the long way round, I retrace my route to Okongwati,
through the Zebra mountains. After pausing a while to make breakfast in the shade of
a camelthorn tree, I turn north east through the village of Epembe and the Ehomba
mountains; the road is mostly good and the journey takes me six hours, punctuated by
the inevitable and frequent Himba beggars. By the time I regain the riverbank, I am
so completely immune to the, once attractive, semi-naked body, that I am considering
the implications if I were to start running them over. The lodge, as at Epupa, is
situated in the shade of a small palm forest; there are many large deciduous trees and
also lemon trees bearing fruit ready for picking. Everything here seems to be very
big, flowers about my campsite tower over me causing me to recall the old TV series
of Land of the Giants. I am close by the riverbank again, but there are trees that
would prevent me sliding into the water in the middle of the night and although the
river runs at some speed, it is quiet. There are crocodiles aplenty.
If I wish to eat, I am required to book by 3pm and as it is nearly so, and I am mindful
that it is time I had a cooked meal, I order a fillet steak to be served on the veranda
overlooking the river at seven oclock. The meal, complete with a large gin and tonic,
for the quinine in the tonic, you understand, is excellent, despite the dreadful din of
the tree frogs trying to attract a mate. This is quite a beautiful place to be, there are
about twelve tables lit by oil lamps and if one can ignore the frogs, some pleasant
hours can be whiled away. I find it very strange though; it is the holiday season up
here, as winter approaches so that it becomes cool, I would have expected other
tourists, there is no one here at all, but me. There is no radio reception here, no
newspapers, perhaps something has happened out there. Perhaps you are not there to
read this?
More likely I have been too long in solitary. The morning should bring with it a
lazy day, but there is that cupboard; a thick stain is beginning to spread across the
floor. I should have put tins on the bottom, but no, that is where my packets are; soup,
pasta and such. The goo from above has them all stuck to the floor and they tear and
add to the mayhem as they are removed. Some hot water soon has the place looking
clean again, but a little bit empty. I decide not to buy any more as I dont use them,
and anyway, it would happen over again. Regretting that I didnt take the offer from
the lady in the blue dress, I also have a laundry day; a big one, bedding, towels, the
lot.

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I shall leave here tomorrow, leave the Namib in all its forms, all its peoples. I will
head East, the tar roads of Owamboland, to Tsumeb, and then the Kalahari.