No Stopping for Lions (4 page)

We find a camping store and get talking to one of the proprietors, a closed, quietly dour Afrikaner. After a while he relaxes in our company and tells little stories of life up here in a lonesome corner of the country. Then, after he and Neil get talking about the fall of apartheid and the introduction of Black Empowerment, he surprises us by stating that he's always believed apartheid to be immoral and he confides with embarrassment that there are still fellow countrymen on surrounding farms who beat their workers. People are not always what they seem. Neil negotiates with him a trade-in on our recalcitrant tent and we leave stocked up with a fancy blue and yellow lightweight number, new air-mattresses and state-of-the-art headlamps.

That night we drive back to the B&B from a restaurant in town through a strange sparkling light. The hostess tells us that it is the beginning of a desert mist and that we can expect it at this time of year. She is curious about our trip and we spend a half-hour or so chatting to her about our plans and adventures. Although she can sympathise with Neil in his wish to locate the family farm, she hints that she thinks it's a lost cause and that he must be slightly crazy, dragging his wife into the dangers of the bush.

Afterwards Neil asks me, for the hundredth time he says, to stop interrupting him when he's telling a story. Justifiably, he finds it more than annoying and the fact that I keep doing it is more annoying still. I know that I do it, and sometimes do try to restrain myself, but I tell him that I get so involved in his story that I just have to add to it. He's not buying that excuse. I try to find a more valid one but the truth is I can't, so we leave the subject with a threat and a promise hovering over the issue like the settling mist outside.

My determination to be a glamorous traveller is waning. By the third day out from Cape Town I cut back to a bit of lipstick; by day five it's just a quick smear of sunblock and lip salve. In Upington main street I catch sight of my get-up reflected in the Pick n Pay window: zippered safari trousers already shrunk, baggy T-shirt and a sleeveless padded vest affair all in shades of khaki, beige or brown, teamed with my good Italian buckled court shoes now down at heel and dusty. However, unable to detect the dark roots in the reflection I think my hair is still looking pretty good.

Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park is one of the few national parks in South Africa that allows for the free movement of wildlife, the fence on the Botswanan side having been taken down. The closer to the park we get, the more ostriches and gemsbok (known as oryx outside South Africa) we see, and road-kill appears in our path and on the verge. Somewhere north of Upington we come across what I've been looking forward to seeing: a donkey cart, known locally as a Kalahari Ferrari. Driven by a young boy and loaded up with brothers and a mother with a bandanna-clad head, it moves at a good pace along a worn track parallel to the road. The landscape changes from rocky, tussocky desert to red sand, and we leave the tarred road behind and hit heavy corrugations. There are few trees and even fewer signs of human habitation so we're surprised when a little family of children jump out on the road in front of us, dancing madly and waving us in to stop at a little lean-to of a stall they've set up to sell simple carvings and jewellery. One wears unruly hair and a lap-lap; all he needs is a bone through his nose and he'd be the spitting image of the drawing of Neil done by a good friend, an artist, as a going-away present.

It is the policy of SANParks to maintain the ecological balance of Kgalagadi by limiting the number of visitors, and for the same reason the camps are kept small, which makes it difficult to get accommodation. Months ago we'd reserved a combination of camping sites and cabins, taking anything available, and we'd been lucky enough to score tents in three wilderness camps.

We register at Twee Rivieren, the gateway to the park, then set off for Kieliekrankie Wilderness Camp. Almost at once we see lots of game: gemsbok, sleek fat antelope with beautiful markings and elegant sexy horns; red hartebeest, which look like they're compiled from the body parts from many different animals and whose horns don't seem to know in which direction they should be growing; black-backed jackals; herds of springbok; and the snooty kori bustard, a big handsome bird strutting around with its nose in the air. We're both excited to be here and immediately fall in love with this park.

Just after we reach camp two elderly couples arrive and we meet for the first time the ugly rich Jo'burger. One wife with voluminous black hair is decked out in over-sized silver earrings, gold front tooth, diamonds on the soles of her shoes. A lineless, smileless, plump face. Polite and pleasant, one husband manages to get over in a short conversation that he owns 40 Mercedes and lectures me on the dismal state of the Union; the annoyances and inconveniences caused by the current regime; how hard it is to enjoy the fruits of a lifetime's hard work; honest hard-working whites paying too many taxes and supporting the rest of the population, who are always wanting time off to go to the funeral of a brother or sister or granny. Do we have the same problem in Australia with Aboriginal staff?

Neil and I sit on the terrace wrapped in blankets to guard against the rapidly dropping temperature and drinking red wine. It's a landscape of red dusty sand, stumpy blue tussocks, afternoon greys. No sound at all, then a single jackal bark from one side, answered by the hoots and hellos of his family from all over the place.

When we leave the next morning at 9.45 we are reprimanded by the camp officer for not observing an important park rule — visitors must be checked out of camps by nine o'clock each morning. We fear expulsion or at least a fine, but drive off with just
9.45 a.m.
underlined on our access permit.

Nossob rest camp is our next destination and on arrival we read that the temperature the night before was -5°C. We're allotted a good site and the new tent goes up without a hitch, although we can't quite work out what the extra toggles on the pins are for. We settle in and manage to have a meal cooked and eaten before scavenging jackals pass through the camp. Later, a lion roars and grunts at regular intervals and the sound cuts across the night and echoes around the tents. I'm getting to like this life, but I can tell by the way he starts at scuffling sounds and stumbles on the guy wires that Neil still has a way to go.

After an 8.55 a.m. departure we drive out heading northward and come across two male lions said to be brothers snoozing right on the verge. Any closer and they would be hit by a car coming around the corner. As it is, the tail of one flips out over the road every now and then. On a later drive we see two more males — or could they be our brothers? — reclining in the scant shade of a thorny bush. They stretch and yawn and look particularly dopey — dishevelled teenagers after a big night out. We go on a guided evening game drive and see a lone brown hyena, head down, plodding around his territory with determined resignation. With his beautiful flowing brown coat he looks like he's just come from the hairdressers rather than a cramped and dusty den. We're told he does this 5-kilometre lap of his territory every evening. The guide is excellent and bears out our suspicion that the information gleaned from a good guide more than makes up for a lack of sightings. All the other passengers are old devotees of Kgalagadi, some having visited the park many times, while one family comes back year after year. The wife tries to describe the attraction and, half embarrassed, settles on ‘mystical'. I can see what she means, as I'm completely charmed.

The road to Gharagab, the remotest of the wilderness camps, passes close by Unions End. This is the confluence of the borders of South Africa, Botswana and Namibia and may as well be the ends of the earth. As soon as we near Gharagab we sense that this is a special place. Four timber and canvas cabins look out over rolling Kalahari dunes and low thorn-scattered savannah, totally quiet and perfectly still. The loudest noise is the squeak of the floorboards and the brightest light is the sun reflected in the waterhole below. The tap water is so salty that it leaves a crust on dishes and glasses. We love it. At night a beautiful gecko whose white spots glow luminous in the flash of the torch keeps the insects down in the kitchen. He moves into the bedroom when we go to bed and we sleep soundly knowing that he is there protecting us from the only wildlife which we fear that night — mosquitoes.

We move on to Bitterpan camp where we're greeted with the news that a puff adder has just been relocated from beneath a chair in the communal kitchen. We later see the camp officer out the back cautiously kicking over a log then jumping back, rifle ready. From then on I open every cupboard cautiously and look under every chair before sitting down. After dinner we go down to the huge saltpan in front of the camp with a spotlight and the only other guests, a young South African family. All we spot is the silhouette of the camp officer skulking about with a torch in the bush behind our cabins. In the morning he tells us that he was looking for a young leopard that has been sniffing around. He adds that when this camp was being built the lions were so plentiful and so menacing that a fence had to be built around the perimeter of the site to keep the workers safe. There's no fence now, no security at all except for our armed ranger to protect against fierce predators and confused puff adders.

After nightcaps with the South Africans, Neil is packing away our glasses and wine cask when he makes a worrying discovery: by a miscalculation we appear to be drinking more than we'd intended. He's read the small print and it appears that the South African casks we've bought are not 1.5 litres but 2 litres, and it's been taking us the same amount of time to polish one off.

Leaving Bitterpan the Troopy nearly runs over a beautifully marked puff adder, just coming out onto the road to sun itself in the morning warmth. We're halfway to the next camp when we have to pull over so that I can remove a tick embedded in Neil's neck. At least it's not a puff adder.

Our last night in the park is spent in Kalahari Tented Camp, another unfenced wilderness camp. It's peaceful on the terrace of tent number 12 and we sit and watch for birds, not wanting to move, but as evening approaches we pull ourselves away and go out for a game drive to the Dalkeith waterhole. There are giraffe up the gully and springbok on the ridge. We scare off the only other car there then pull up beside a clump of acacias and look around for some action. This is what people told us we should do on safari: park by a waterhole and just wait for something to happen. We've only been there five minutes when off to the left we notice movement. Neil suddenly grabs my arm as he realises what he is seeing: two cheetahs, moving in cautiously across the dry riverbed. They are totally focused on the springbok and pause mid-step for minutes at a time, working to an ancient agenda. When they reach long grass they move a little quicker, low and camouflaged. Thirty minutes have passed and they've covered just 20 to 30 metres. We lose sight of them behind a tree then see in the rear-view mirror that the giraffes are behind us, wanting to get to the waterhole but sensing danger. It's action on all sides but we realise that we'll have to leave at once to get back to camp before sunset, the cut-off time. As we drive off we go past the cheetahs, only their heads visible above the long grass, but our engine has scared the springbok and they run away. We hightail it back to camp and arrive just as the attendant is marking his clipboard with a big red cross against number 12. Neil starts on a long-winded excuse for why we're late: the waterhole, the grazing unawares springbok, the interminable time it took the cheetahs to move across the
vlei
— they took too long! The attendant listens for a time then says, ‘Sshh, I understand. It is the fault of the cheetahs.'

On the road out next morning we take the Dalkeith fork but there is no sign of anything by the waterhole, let alone two big fat cheetahs and the remains of a springbok. We later meet up with the Bitterpan family, who tell us of their morning drive and of a leopard with a jackal kill in a tree overhanging the road. This is on the alternative fork in the road to the one we took. They have news of our cheetahs, too, who apparently did get a springbok early that morning and, again, by the other road. It just goes to show that it's the luck of the draw when it comes to watching game.

A policeman pulls us over on our last afternoon game drive. He does a radio check on the Troopy and reminds us of the speed limit. We're in trouble again; apparently you must carry your entry permit with you at all times when on the road, and ours is back in camp. Neil tries to distract the officer with a discussion about the state of South African roads as opposed to Namibian, which seems to work because we get off with a warning. This encounter dampens our enthusiasm for a time and makes us realise that we're not exempt from the rules and laws that apply to those around us. We may be free agents but we're not free to do as we please.

Even though big wooden gates and new immigration buildings are in place at Mata-Mata, the hoped-for border crossing into Namibia through Kgalagadi is not yet operational. Apparently the diplomatic and bureaucratic to-ing and fro-ing requires many more months of important meetings and workshops at beachside locations. Now we must exit the park and head south to the closest border post, half a day's drive away at Rietfontein.

We experience our first border crossing today when we reach Rietfontein. Still on the South African side, our firewood is confiscated because
it's not allowed into Namibia — see that sign?
The sign says no maize or maize products are allowed into Namibia. But it's cold and there are no trees around so leaving the wood is the least we can do. Once in Namibia the roads and scenery immediately improve. One minute we're driving through a landscape of red mesas and brown buttes that look like the badlands in spaghetti westerns, then over a ridge and it's plains of grasslands, silver like vast fields of snow.

Keetmanshoop appears out of the desert and we find an Internet café. Also street boys, asking for sweeties. We're warned that they'll scratch our car if we don't give them any, but they appear in awe of the Troopy and not only do they leave us alone, but they direct us to the OK Bazaars supermarket.

Quivertree Forest rest camp is a few kilometres out of town and we arrive just in time for the three o'clock cheetah feeding. The owner's daughter arrives at the gate of the enclosure with a bucket containing two freshly dead dassies. These are the cutest little mammals when alive. Also known as rock rabbits or hyrax, their true name, they look like a cross between a rabbit and a guinea pig. They make good eating for larger carnivores — cats in particular seem to fancy them — and these cheetahs go wild when they see the contents of the bucket. We're told to keep well back, then the daughter opens the gate a crack and chucks a dead dassie to each of the cats. They're so preoccupied with tearing their meal apart that we're allowed in with them and encouraged to pat them. No way. I'm all for keeping wild animals wild and keeping all my body parts.

The campsite is over a rise on the periphery of the quiver tree forest. Just before sunset we wander through the trees, which are famous for supplying the wood for Bushmen's quivers, and we see the old family patriarch and his wobbly dog appearing over the rise from deep in the forest, a rifle in one hand and a trio of dead dassies in the other.

The roads in Namibia are impressive and Neil in particular enjoys driving on them. Mostly gravel, sometimes compacted gravel and mud known as
murram
, and rarely tarred, they are straight and flat and only present a problem in the unlikely event that there's another vehicle in the vicinity. This becomes visible from kilometres away, a long white vapour trail advancing steadily towards us until it whizzes past and we're forced to pull up immediately or at least slow to a crawl, so thick is the dust. Once, when it settled, we were surprised to find ourselves in a different landscape altogether, one all soft and dreamy. It wasn't until I wound down the window to take a photo that we realised the Troopy had been coated in a fine white powder.

We're heading for farm accommodation in the Tiras Mountains, a stark, rocky range on the edge of the Namib Desert, but here the landscape is flat and a thick ribbon of dust hovers over the road in our wake. We divert off the main road to drop off a hitchhiker at the farm where he works and the slight detour takes us past the first high red dunes we've seen so far. If this is an indication of the famous landscape at Sossusvlei, I can't wait to get there. In photos and documentaries this long sweep of a valley appears to be from another planet: smooth, stationary dunes, the highest in the world, a moonscape made up of surfaces and shadows which change from intense red to soft lilac as the day progresses and the sun bleaches the light.

We turn off onto the farm road — barely a track — and we're concentrating so much on keeping to it that we nearly miss seeing a family of wild horses moving quickly across a dune. These are the famous wild horses of the Namib and something I'd just been reading about. Their total adaptation to the harsh conditions of the desert is legendary, and romantic too, and it's even more intriguing that they have an uncertain history.

It's well known that they've been around since ‘German times', and one theory is that they are the result of cavalry mounts let loose by the German Schutztruppe and/or South African forces during World War I. Another story has it that they are the descendants of breeding stock belonging to an eccentric German baron who left his stud to go off and fight in the war. The neglected horses were forced to fend for themselves and found their way to permanent water in the Garub region. Then there's an Australian link, as it's thought possible that thoroughbreds from a ship bound for Australia from Europe swam ashore after being shipwrecked off the mouth of the Orange River. Only the strong survived, and it is their genes that have created the hardy feral stock of today.

Whatever their history, I am excited to have caught a glimpse of them, especially since Frau Hundin at the main farmhouse tells us they've only recently appeared here. The farm's campsite is in a dramatic setting, nestled in amongst large boulders at the end of a narrow valley, and there's a welcoming party of one smiling Labrador who stays with us until we go to bed. When we go over to our bathroom, tucked in against a smooth rock face, we discover that there's no hot water, as promised. Neil braves a cold shower but the temperatures outside are too low for me to contemplate taking off any layers, let alone risk standing under an icy jet. That night the wind picks up to a gale and the tent is blown over. We're snug in our sleeping capsule but feel that it would be safer to de-camp to the shower block. We drag stretchers and bedding over, lock ourselves in and get a decent sleep, even though the farm's workers are stomping all over the roof and rattling the door throughout the night, trying to fix the hot water.

The next day we abandon camping and move to a little stone chalet built into the rocks. It's tiny, little more than a room with two beds and a tree growing up through the middle, but it has a wonderful peaceful air and we sit on the
stoep
like dassies facing the sun, drinking coffee, trying to get warm. This is something that I'm only just getting used to: the fact that it's winter and it's cold, but every day the sun is shining and there is no chance whatsoever that it might rain. Even Neil has taken some time to readjust to the predictability of the seasons and I've seen him looking concerned and wary whenever he spots clouds massing on the horizon.

The farm's main industry is breeding emus and we're invited to wander around the yards and enclosures. On an afternoon walk we come across a wild female ostrich who has wandered in from the dunes in search of a mate. She's spied a nesting male and flutters and flirts and tries all sorts of fancy dancing to attract his attention, but she seems not to have noticed that there's a tall wire fence separating them. On his side the male seems to be excited, but it's not clear whether this is because he's falling for the seduction or is just annoyed at her distracting him from his brooding duties.

People speak about ‘overlanders' with a mixture of affection and dread. They can be found all over Africa, travelling in big, heavy passenger trucks that stop for no more than 24 hours at a place before whooshing off to the next. There's usually a determined driver gripping the wheel, and tired or sleeping faces at the big picture windows.

We're about 20 kilometres out of Sesriem, the access point to Sossusvlei in the Namib-Naukluft Park, when we see in the wing mirrors the telltale dust trail of a large vehicle gaining on us fast. It passes in a cloud of gravel and dust, and a few kilometres further on we see it take a curve in the road (an unusual thing in itself) on two wheels, sliding on the loose surface but with no noticeable deceleration. When we get to Sesriem campsite the overland driver is in the office, cajoling the ranger into giving him a particular site. His life must be one long journey of deadlines and hassles. We are allotted our site, which is large and private, under a big tree on the periphery of the grounds and thankfully a good distance from the overland groups that are settling in at the extreme ends of the camp. We hear loud male Australian voices from one end and a mixture of European accents drifting over from the other.

It's dark and we're sitting around our campfire watching a giant cockroach — or is it a grasshopper? — move slowly up the flap of our tent. The air is crisp but warm and a full moon ripples through fields of silvery grass beyond the camp wall. We're surrounded by people but we may as well be the only ones wrapped in the heart of this empty desert. Then we hear voices and through the shadows come dreadlocks and smiling faces. Two girls introduce themselves as Sonje and Gigi and wonder if we might take them with us into Sossusvlei in the morning as their rental car is not a four-wheel drive and can't go as far into the dunes as the Troopy. Of course we agree and an hour before sun-up the next morning the four of us are in the Troopy, lined up at the park entrance along with many overland trucks and four-wheel drives, waiting for the gates to open. We're soon away, and take off on a very good paved road for the hour's drive to be at Sossusvlei for the rising of the sun over the famous red dunes. The girls are great company and we learn that they're from Brussels and both employed to promote the use of Flemish in the households and boardrooms of their country. Neil comments that they'd be pushing it uphill, but their young enthusiasm chooses to ignore this Doubting Thomas. We have to go faster and faster, well above the speed limit, to make it on time, and the girls cheer every time we overtake another car. When we get onto the four-wheel-drive section the Troopy alternately stalls and skids in sand drifts, but the girls love it. Only Neil and I know that he's never tackled anything like this before and I can see his knuckles white and tight on the steering wheel. As soon as we reach the car park we all bail out and race towards the east, ploughing through sand and dry saltbeds, and just as Gigi reaches the top of the tallest dune the sun emerges and the world goes red.

On the return journey the girls urge Neil to accelerate through the sand drifts and as we slide alarmingly off our track they whoop and laugh and high-five each other while Neil and I sit tensebacked in the front seat. Later on when we are saying our goodbyes we notice their rental vehicle. Only halfway through the holiday but already the little sedan is scratched and coated in thick dust, with missing hubcaps and a torn and hanging side mirror. They've collected dings from rocks and hit chickens as they've flown around the Namibian countryside, and taken a 600-kilometre detour to drop off a local to whom they gave a lift.

The road north east to Zebra River Lodge in the Tsaris Mountains ribbons along wide sunburnt valleys and between rocky peaks and mesas. There's not another person in sight, not a vehicle on the road nor a farmhouse to break the landscape. At the lodge we receive a very nice welcome from four dogs and three cats and a manager who promises to give me a Reiki massage later on. We're served lunch, despite arriving at 3.30 p.m. This is something Neil remembers from his early days of travelling through Africa, that there's always a meal waiting for you and no one's put out if you arrive late. Unreliable vehicles and unpredictable conditions make deadlines irrelevant, and communication can be patchy with mobile-phone coverage limited to populated areas, so everyone is used to expecting you when they see you.

That night we eat with interesting guests: an American family (daughter working in
Malooorwi
), and a very urbane German. Neil and I have our first real disagreement after Neil takes a dislike to the smug daughter. When she says that she could help us with our travel plans because she's lived in Africa for three months Neil transparently tries to trap her by asking if the border post at Sumbawanga is currently open. Then when he senses victory he proceeds to lecture her in detail on the significance of the northern borders, and the history of Central and East Africa in general. He's being petty and trivialising her knowledge and her enthusiasm for a continent that he himself is enthusiastic about. The others are bored and I'm embarrassed. As soon as we get back to our room I tell him to cool it, that before our trip is over we're going to come across many more like her who see themselves as Africa experts and who believe that their experiences are unique and their knowledge all encompassing. But Neil is incensed that this parvenu, who can't even pronounce Malawi correctly, thinks she can tell him, Neil, about the place where he was born and raised. It has slipped his mind that he has never visited Malawi. I tell him that I'm not prepared to spend the next eleven months listening to his lectures then feeling obliged to apologise for his boorish behaviour the next morning. We go to bed angry with each other and irritated that each one's point of view is being ignored by the other.

Next morning it's all forgotten as Neil wakes me to look outside. A heavy mist has blocked out the early sun and the scene looks like an old black-and-white photo. The table and chairs on our verandah hover unrooted and unreal, and all sense of perspective is lost as trees and a windmill loom in silhouette further away. When the mist lifts we go for a long walk up over the mesas looking for mountain zebras, but only come across a big barking black baboon, warning us away from his mountain. It's amazing that animals can survive and flowers bloom in this most severe of landscapes. There are very few trees, just some low clumpy acacias and a lone quiver tree standing like a portrait on the horizon, but we come across a flourish of pretty pink flowers growing from a rock face, and pincushions of tiny white ground cover nestle in the shadows of a dry riverbed.

The kitchen hand and general dogsbody of the lodge is Mac, a nineteen-year-old black Namibian and hospitality student getting hands-on experience. Well spoken and motivated, if he represents the emerging Namibian youth, the country is on the right track. Why should I be surprised that he can intelligently discuss his long-term goals and has worked out a plan to achieve them? Have I , under the surface, been assuming that young blacks are ambitionless and unable to articulate their hopes and intentions, let along have any in the first place? I've always believed that my father's open-mindedness embedded a strong sense of social justice in his children and that I inherited his latitude and respect for all. But this attitude I'm taking is not open-minded at all; I'm mistaking a lack of First World education for simple-mindedness, and a difference in culture for a lack of one. It's just as well I've met Mac early in our travels and been forced to question these prejudices before falling into a bigger trap. After meals when his duties ease, Mac, the German and I talk about food and cooking. Mac is hungry for knowledge and loves to hear stories of our favourite dishes and new-to-him ingredients. The German tells of eating truffles in France, and I try to explain why I think prosciutto with melon is the perfect pairing. I promise Mac a cookbook and he jots down his contact details, saying that eleven months is not too long to wait for it.