Namibia weblog 2005

Travelling to the North Country

April 5th 2005

Rosanne writes:

"Epupa Falls is shown on the map in the far left hand corner of the country, on the River Kunene, but the only access to it is revealed as a thin dotted line. The guide books issue heavy warnings about travelling in this part. You should always drive in a convoy. You must carry enough fuel for all emergencies, no petrol stations from 100s of kilometres. Carry food spares and enough water so that in case of breakdown you can make a bid to survive. It is enough to make your spine tingle.

The local take on it is this, sure take your ordinary car up to such and such a point and turn left where the road is slightly better. Yes, in the dry season its OK. The only real problem is in the rainy season when the two large river beds which also double up as roads become flooded. Several people we know had been there without difficulty, and only one had been caught out by some rain and waded/drove/struggled through one of the rivers.

Our friends Michael and Else, Danish and Canadian volunteers with VSO, were leaving and wanted to visit Epupa before they left. Would we like to come, next weekend? We are the ones with the 4x4. There had been no rains for 3 weeks, even though it is technically the rainy season. So, why not? Frenzied consultation of maps and guide books, ignore dread warnings, ring lodges in the area to check roads passable, positive response. We set off.

It goes without saying for fear of repetition that the scenery was glorious. The change from sand flats to wooded hills is breathtaking. There was a range of low mountains with stripes like a zebra, improbable but true. Were the stripes shadows or vegetation? The meadows were filled with soft flowers like primroses and we saw elegant small thick stemmed shrubs alive with gaudy pink flowers. I had to tumble out and photograph one and fiddle with it and got an instant blister on my fingers…later discovered this to be the plant with which bushmen poison their arrow tips.

We drove for 9 hours only stopping for a mad picnic in the road. Immediately people appeared from out of nowhere. Three little naked Himba children and then two Himba women in their proper costume... naked from the waist, tiny skirt of animal skins, bracelets of metal beads, bodies smeared with red earth and butter. They wanted us to give them tobacco, sweets, money but all we offered were ginger biscuits. So they sat a few yards away and watched us eat our crisps, sandwiches, fruit and drinks, spread out on a yellow cloth, all somehow rather brash and highly coloured, and we tried not to feel uncomfortable in our plenty.

The road was hair raising beyond that certain point. It turned into a succession of stony ravines and riverbeds, all passable, but bumpy and slow. In a small village the road disappeared, despite a battered signpost saying Epupa. We circled around, looking for the road, once a gravel track, now a cloud of dust and a desolate series of huts and a bar significantly named The Right Road. In the bar we were told to drive into the river bed for a while…and yes the road did reappear after 500m of forks and bends along the river bed. The new road builders were busily at work several miles on. They were carving up the old road and levelling a new path with a heavy bulldozer. A stout worker in bib overalls waving a red flag, only to us in the whole day, I should think, directed us into the path of the bulldozer. We drove through virgin soil, not unlike crossing a freshly ploughed field. The earth was rich and red and fragrant and we didn’t sink or bog down, we teetered on.

All along the drive children came skittering out to wave and scream and call out SWEETIES and we waved cheerily back. Even the group of pastoralists in their Himba attire of short kilts and boat headdresses who were driving a large herd stopped us to ask for sweets. We felt torn: we had no sweets, should they be begging, were we mean to give them nothing?

And there, suddenly, were the falls. A bank of palms hid the powerful spray but the smell changed into a strong rivery smell and the air was humid and soft. Our campsite was a series of smooth sandy places under towering palms and beautiful deep shade just alongside the river. From our tent the view was shade, palm, river, mountains, sky. Loud birdsong all around and we saw a family of African Paradise flycatchers in bright oranges with long extending tails teaching their young, whose tails were still short and stubby, to fly.

The falls were magnificent; not a single bank of water but a split in the rocks making multiple falls and torrents with beautiful baobab trees clinging to the rocks. The colour of the water surging down the crags was a green grey with white yellow foam and birds with a short dart of colour were swooping and swirling about. We pecked our way along the edge of the falls for a long way until we could see the place where the river finally rested and flowed straight. There was a good rock for perching on to gaze downstream, with a surprising sign painted on it: "Sit here for sundowner $5". We sat anyway.

A young Himba woman with two babies came and offered herself for a photo and we talked together…her English small, but communication possible with gestures and smiles. She was beautiful and was caring for one of those babies for a friend who had gone away to another village for a long time, long long. Her skin was smooth and glossy and yet her breasts had been turned into elongated tubes by constant suckling. The little skirt she wore made of skins curled around her legs and her legs were weighed down with anklets. What a stunning sight. We found her several more times in the next days, once making jewellery threads by spinning and twisting fibres from a plastic woven sack, once just lolling on a shady rock rather seductively by a young guy in a Spurs football shirt, and once in the village store/ cuca bar buying sweets. We sat with her and her friend as they were making a fire, and watched her bring out little lumps of red stone from a leather pouch and pound them on a stone into a fine powder. She then rubbed in some fat from a pot and made her skin balm and rubbed it in. We played with her little fat girl baby and Elsa gave her a silver bangle.

In the night it rained massively and at seven all four of us debunked into the car to get dry, warm and have a makeshift breakfast of ginger biscuits. I read several chapters of Under The Shadow Of the Sun which spurred on a lively discussion. When the rain slowed we were joined by our Himba guide who walked us along the river and through a raging stream or two and on up into the mountain for a giddy view of the river and falls. It was a perfect walk, through the drenched huts of the Himba village, along the insect-loud vegetation of the riverbank, and the screeching vervet monkeys, stopping to look at birds and strange edicinal cacti and then stumbling upon an African take on the Lonely Reaper by William Wordsworth.

A thin haunting song was wafting in the air and behind a scraggy fence of twigs a boy was perched high on the trunk of a dead tree, surveying a sizeable patch of maize, fending off raiding monkeys, and singing his song.

That night it rained again. Huge drumming rain on the trembling tent. In the morning we saw the river was straining at the bank and we saw it was time to leave before the road became totally impassable. We raced around in swimming costumes, packing the tents and breaking camp in just twenty minutes flat and then joined two other cars to give moral strength to our risky departure.

Just five minutes up the track we met the first obstacle. The river was pounding in shades of angry red mud. I gingerly started to cross on foot to check the depth and nearly got swept downstream in water above my knees. We placed three marker stones and sat and waited to see if the level would go up or down. The rain stopped, the level sank, we crossed after just half and hour. The rain turned itself on and off for the next six hours, and always in colossal downpourings.

The road gets worse and worse......

It seemed a good idea to take photographs and start counting the rivers we crossed after it quickly became apparent that this was going to be a regular feature of our trip. Thirty seven rivers, all like snakes: some fat and lazy, some huge and terrifying, some sneaky and thin. We took them all slow and steady. Several required the stone markers and waiting treatment, all but one were going down. The worst was the river whose level was rising. Downstream was a lip and an fall. When we crossed it we even felt the car drifting towards the edge of the lip.

What took us nine hours on the way up took twelve on the way back. Perilous driving was shared amongst us and the time whizzed by as all four of us told life stories and chattered. Four times the cheer and courage".