The early morning pre-dawn is ghostly in the waning moonlight that struggles to peer through the fog. The tang of the sea is in my nostrils, even here, 50 km from the coast. It’s all very evocative here, lots of evoking going on right left and centre. And the Fog is, like Terry Pratchett’s Death, a character, a personality of note: it is the defining feature of the area – without it there is almost no moisture other than some very half-hearted sporadic rains every few years. But the Fog is not your common or garden misty stuff. It can be “low,” blanketing the land lovingly with low visibility, or it can be a “high fog” (possibly called cloud in other places, let’s face it). It hangs around all day sometimes, except for a two-hour window that allows planes to fly in that time. The faint tang of moisture in the air that it brings adds texture to that silence that blasts the eardrums with the absence of noise.
We were off to the Skeleton Coast today, a fascinating journey through five different habitats, starting with driving along the Hoanib riverbed which has cut through the earth so that there are sheer cliff-like walls with horizontal layers of compacted sand and clay rising up on either side; when it floods, the water carves out a little more of the wall and you don’t want to stand too close to the edge of this cliff. It’s early yet and also darker because of the Fog, so no-one has “shown up for work” as Papa G says – in other words, the animals move away from the cold riverbed at night and return in the morning to browse on the trees, grasses and bushes in the day.
After a while, the walls draw nearer together, but are not as high as they were, just above the height of our vehicle and it is at this moment that Ken at the back shouts, “Lion!” Lo and behold, the last two of the Five Musketeers (see previous day's events) are lying on the edge of the cliff wall, heads up and ears pricked watching us intently as we scramble for cameras and Papa G reverses madly, saying “Shhh!” and generally trying to keep our yells of delight down. Apparently, these two had become separated from the rest of the pride the week before and possibly were trying to find their way back to their mothers again – we could have told them ourselves where to go, but we don’t speak Big Cat. Papa G informed Flip the researcher that the two were here and looked in good health. He beamed at us; as he had told us yesterday, if you see lion once in a week here you’re very lucky so this was really special. Very regal they looked, except that their manes are still a bit scruffy and sparse so their cubness is stronger than their Trafalgar Square look.
We watched them watching us for a while before moving on to where such determined, aggressive river erosion ended and the floodplains began. Now this is bizarre: in the middle of a desert is a large flat expanse that is filled with greenery – a lot left over from the ‘flood’. In January 2015, for the first time in 20 years, the river came down so strongly that it was indeed a flood, roaring through the riverbed, gouging out some of the cliff walls on the bends, before spreading out into the furthest reaches of these flat plains causing a flurry of green everywhere, so much in fact that months later, the green has remained. Then, for the first time in many a year, the water pushed right through the dune fields, breaking down dunes like a wave does a child’s sandcastle, to end a little while later, running out of steam (or should I say stream har har) before it could reach the river mouth at the sea.
So we drove through the greenness that was edged in turn by bare black rock and golden dunes rising above it all round – a 360-degree anomaly. And above that black and brown frame lay the Fog, pressing down and rolling over the dunes so that we seemed to be on a strange planet utterly different to all we’ve seen before.
If so though, we seemed to have brought some ellies with us as we saw some in the distance munching away contentedly on this lingering largess.
On we bounced, admiring the “desert tiles” – large cracked clay across the desert floor – and strangely shaped or coloured rocks, red shot through with black, all around us; words like ‘metamorphic granite,’ ‘sediment,’ and other geological terms were made real for me as the earth’s achingly slow history was revealed layer by layer.
We finally emerged from the thick grey-green into beige sand – not yet golden as the Fog kept the colours muted, but it was getting there, the sun manfully trying to get through somewhere in the brightening gloom above us – and now it was the turn of the almost endless dunes: smooth sand-waves rising up and over, with tufts of grass and sturdy bushes here and there, all doing the evocative thing again.
And then suddenly, magical words were shouted: “Brown hyaena!” – an almost-never sight: a shaggy brown doglike creature peered at us before lolloping away (I’m trying to find the best word for the way this hyaena runs – all four paws moving in the opposite direction to its legs, flip-floppy like) – luckily in the same direction as the road we were taking. So we followed, stopping to snap madly at the blur, gesticulate and smile delightedly at one another (even those who might have thought that this was normal got the gist when they saw the two guides high five each other later). On and on she or he ran and we would stop to let him or her go (we never did find out which it was) only to find our paths crossing again. No vegetation meant that we got a clear view and watched as he/she then began to scent-mark like mad, peeing with enthusiasm on a two-week-old oryx skull, in a rare patch of grass, a bush – clearly he had an agenda but who knew what it was? – before leaving us and disappearing theatrically over a dune.
It was in this heightened ecstasy that we continued to roar up dunes (almost getting stuck adds that frisson) and down until at the top of one of the highest we jumped out for coffee and a protein bar and to congratulate ourselves (as if we had anything to do with it) on that sighting.
Here though, the silence took over. Reigned absolute. The only movements were that of one grain of sand dropping a millimetre, no, a nanometre, to one side or another. Once again I was aware of the millions of years of our planet encapsulated – and yes I mean in a small capsule of time – right here. Minuscule movements of the bones of this Earth, each one taking more than a lifetime of a puny human being, so that over the aeons, rocks are ground down, their remains moved and mixed, creating more mountains and gorges, dunes and ocean floors, a rift and a continent.
All this, one grain at a time.
Well, after that little epiphany, we dropped off the edge of the dune. No, really. The said dune edge is almost a right angle downwards to the ‘floor’ and Papa G was going to drive down it. Vertically. But he suggested that we might like to slide down ourselves, so Ken, Michael and I took it on. Sadly, sliding elegantly is an oxymoron; you have to sit on your bum and use all four limbs to push yourself downwards – the sand is so thick you can’t slide. But after working up a bit of speed, about halfway down, the sand beneath us began to vibrate – and to roar. There are dunes known as the roaring dunes, and a bit of this was happening now: grains in fact have air between them and move against each other and the air to create a metallic roaring sound (in our case bum-generated) that vibrated through us. If it wasn’t basically impossible to climb back up, we would have done it again. As it was, we lay at the bottom panting and emptying our shoes and socks of half the Namib Desert.
On through the dunes we went, a boat-car sailing the waves of sand, the Fog finally lifting and in the distance ahead of us, a deeper line of blue that grew as we approached, until we finally arrived at the rocky coast of the Atlantic. Very rocky, goodness me so many rocks. Oh wait, a whole bunch of them are Cape fur seals. What gave it away is that no self-respecting rock would ever smell or sound like that. That master of words, Terry Pratchett, said that Foul Ol' Ron had a smell that was in fact physical, it could stop you cold, going straight from the nose to the tummy. And the noise! Petulant and aggressive, bleating and blaring, noses pointing skywards, flippers waving snootily. (Did remind me of some brochas I’ve been to…) We don’t spend nearly enough time there, but the noses tended to agree with Papa G when he suggested we leave. A pathetic bloody seal carcass at the edge of the colony was testimony to lives brutish and short in this harsh place.
We stopped off at Möwe Bay to see the museum – of the old style: whale bones, human skulls, unidentified things floating in bottles, and a lot of things that came from the shipwrecks; this coast is known as the Skeleton Coast mainly for the skeletons of boats and ships that came to a nasty end here – the people that survived the wreck didn't always survive the land either - reminding us just how thin a thread our lives are spun on. The whale bones also hint at its name – the coast had some whaling past, as did much of southern Africa’s coastline.
We didn't stay long here either (only serious nerds like myself might feel the need), as we went to visit one of the most recent shipwrecks, the Suiderkus, which beached itself Titanic-like on its maiden voyage for no reason that anyone can fathom. Many of the shipwreck remains aren’t really wreck-like any more; thanks to the harsh weather and water, erosion takes its toll so you’re left with just some unprepossessing rusting steel plates and that sort of thing. The Suiderkus however still looks like half a boat as it was only wrecked in the 70s. The Skeleton Coast, methinks, is no longer really about the skeletons of ships that wrecked themselves on the unforgiving rocks in the insensible Fog. The name now could denote the land itself: the place where the bones of Mother Earth are laid bare. And where we recognise in the grains our origins. It is the stuff of which we are drawn and to which we return.
We walked away from the wreck, waves crashing on the rocks, the kelp seaweed that thrives in this cold Benguela current on the west coast of Africa waving its fronds out the foaming water at us. Cormorants and gulls called and the wind was a constant, a counterpoint noise behind those of the ceaseless waves … when there, on a lonely stretch of sand and shells in the next bay, was a table set for lunch, wineglasses and all. There was even some delicious tuna pasta and salad for me! So we sat in the middle of one of the most spectacularly lonely stretches of beach to be found on Earth, in front of the wildest of waters, with only the cormorants, kelp fronds and gulls for company, sipping wine or water and eating cheese and crackers for dessert, a decaying ship in the distance.
Evocative indeed.
I could have stayed for hours but the aircraft was sposed to land any time to take us back to Hoanib – to see it all again only this time by air. (First though it was a bit delayed so we shot off to see the Hoanib River mouth – a brackish mix of fresh and salt water that did not originate from the river itself which had stopped if you remember some kilometres back from the sea. In this water are a few flamingos disporting with bank and white breasted cormorants. The beach here is made of smooth round stones, the crashing waves here taking on a musical note as the stones are moved up and down, up and down in ceaseless endless motion. Not a high rise or promenade to be seen – what a rare privilege and phenomenon in our age!)
The scenic flight back revealed hidden oases and we arrived back at camp to find we’d just missed the ellies coming to visit the small waterhole in front of camp. Ah well, you can’t have everything. A short afternoon stroll across the valley in front of camp, a star talk by comedian / manager Clement and a delicious meal meant that our comfy beds complete with hot water bottles were most welcome. What a day!
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