It was a 6:30am start at Houthoop Guest Farm and a quick breakfast of (delicious) liver and eggs before hitting the dirt roads to Port Nolloth.
In the past, all the roads along the coast were closed to the public, but now a simple flash of ID or driver’s license will allow you through the booms and onto beautiful, if poorly maintained gravel roads through the heavily mined west-coast veld.
In Port Nolloth we made a quick stop for meat and met our guide for the day – Conrad Mouton. The day has been all about Conrad really. Besides guiding us expertly around the spectacular Richtersveld, regaling us with stories and laying on a great little road-side lunch, he also arranged our accommodation at “˜Die Plantasie,’ just outside of Kuboes and organised our braai tonight with some of the local Nama from the village. The little cottages at “˜Die Plantasie’ (also known as the ‘Mountain Valley Guesthouses’) are basic but very neat and clean, with fresh towels, en suite toilet and shower, ceiling fans and even full sized fridges to keep the drinks cold. Nestled in a narrow valley, surrounded by Richtersveld mountains, we’ve been enjoying a fantastic exhibition of dancing and singing and now, from the stoep in front of my cottage, I can see the outline of the circling ridge-line, dimly discernable beneath the bright stars of the southern cross above.
Wherever we went today, Conrad had a story to tell. There were way too many to mention them all now without writing an essay, but here are two that particularly stuck with me.
Alexander Bay
We pulled off the R382 near one of the large diamond mines that dot the coast and Jan asked Conrad about smuggling. “It does happen,” Conrad told us, “and for many years, workers would get away with it much more easily than now days. The mine owners would insist that every man be x-rayed before they left the pits, but some realised that the x-ray equipment only scanned each miner’s body as high as their nose. This then became the chosen place for miners to shove the diamonds, until one day some years ago, a particular miner managed to push a diamond so far up that his nose started to bleed and he was rushed to hospital where the diamond had to be removed with surgery. The miner never worked again and the mine owners became much more thorough about checking up there in the future!”
The “˜Halfmens’ (Half people)
Conrad told his stories in Afrikaans and with much more passion and energy than I can poorly muster here, but I particularly liked this story and I hope I can do it justice with my paraphrasing.
The “˜Halfmens’ is the name given to the evocative, solitary standing trees of the Richtersveld which seem to bend northwards towards the Orange River from their isolated perches on the rocky, sun-baked hills. The story goes that when the Nama people left their homes in Namibia, fleeing war and famine in their northern ancestral lands, they crossed south into South Africa, over the Orange River to start new lives in the harsh but beautiful Richtersveld.
In a tale reminiscent of Lot, they were told by their elders not to look back for doing so would never allow them to leave. There are, however, always those who won’t heed good advice it seems, and some did indeed look back towards the north, across the river to their homeland.
These unfortunates were instantly transformed into trees – the Halfmens – and now stand, forever looking north, their roots digging deep into the arid soil the Nama now call home.
Anyway that’s it for the night for me. Tomorrow we’re headed back down to Springbok and this time tomorrow night I’ll be in a car driving all the way back to Cape Town to make a friend’s wedding. Flying back up to Upington on Sunday though, so I’ll only be missing the couple of nights before heading onto Kimberly on Monday.
If you’re looking for a great guide to the Richtersveld, Conrad Mouton is your man.
Aukwatowa tours
Address: 169 Port Nolloth 8280, South Africa
Tel: 027-851-8026
Cell: 073-651-8833
[email protected]
More information on the day at the Braai4Heritage websites: www.braai.com.
