A Drink of Dry Land

by Chris Marais

  We spoke with Ute about diamond smuggling.

  “One of the most successful smugglers in recent years was a woman with a glass eye and a patch, working out of Oranjemund,” she said. “For some reason, no one thought to search behind her patch. She must have taken out many socketsful of diamonds in her time.

  “Anyone leaving Kolmanskop has to be given a strong dose of castor oil, to make sure all diamonds stay behind,” she added, with a twinkle in her eye. We laughed a little nervously.

  Jules and I took a walk through the old mansions.

  “Hmm,” she said, ever the amateur decorator, “a bit of a fixer-upper, this. A renovator’s dream.” And as we strolled through the buildings, leaving deep footprints in the sand, a slightly angry Namib wind followed in our wake, wiping clean our tracks, turning Kolmanskop back into an untouched ghost town for the next day’s shift of pioneer-tourists …

  Chapter 11: Wild Namib Horses

  Breakfast with Champions

  Over the years, I’ve come to love an early morning with a respectable autofocus camera and a fast horse in my viewfinder. Sometime in the 1990s, I visited a polo estate on the fringes of South Africa’s very own Riviera, Plettenberg Bay. The “moonlight on buttocks” factor, as British travel agents like to describe a romantic getaway, was particularly high at Kurland Estate. But the retired racehorses that made up their polo stock were the highlight for me.

  One morning at Kurland I woke up to a Japanese pre-dawn mist, grabbed my gear and ventured out into the paddock. The horses, at first behaving like a gaggle of high society snobs, moved away from me, my Canons and my tripod. I just ignored them, fiddling with switches and settings and working out where the sun would rise through this craggy mountain haze. Then they nonchalantly began to drift closer, and pretty soon they were hogging the wide-angle lens and misting it up with their grassy breath. One particularly friendly fellow, a dark chestnut sans blaze, kept nosing me in the back. The shoot turned into a brief hug-fest with the chestnut, until the grooms arrived and the day’s business began.

  On another morning, a world away in Mongolia, I emerged in a daze from a night spent lying on my back outside the tent, watching the biggest bandstand of starry sky I’d ever clapped eyes on. Through the valley below rode three little Mongolian boys on their long-maned horses, catching the dawn nicely and breaking into a friendly race that turned into a frenetic gallop and ended up in laughter and gasps of ice-cold breath.

  This was the very breed of steed that took Genghis Khan and his Golden Horde through Eastern Europe, and then across the dreaded Gobi Desert to get at the Chinese in the kingdom of Xi Xia. In the Gobi crossing, Genghis made his warriors stand naked in 200 km/h winds and drink their horses’ blood for supper. Watching those three little boys and their ponies, descendants of the Golden Horde, was like seeing the young Zulu kids of Rorke’s Drift at play and remembering their glorious ancestors.

  And so it was that, on a morning in September 2004, Jules and I huddled in a wooden hide at the Garub waterhole between Lüderitz and Keetmanshoop and watched the legendary wild horses of the Namib – a handsome, athletic bunch – come to drink. I set up the cameras and Jules broke out the travelling breakfast of fruit and health bars. Sometimes, on the road, I feel that a shot of good Russian vodka would get my day in focus but I always choose to fall hungrily on a humble breakfast bar instead. The vodka, unfortunately, taketh the focus away as fast as it giveth the very same.

  First light arrived and lit the desert in rich caramel tones. To the west, a rolling bank of low-lying mist retreated before the sun. Ten minutes later, the landscape turned to yellow sand plains rimmed by purple and black jagged mountains. Salvador Dali should have come here. He would have loved the flinty icebergs floating in ochre seas. As we sat in the hide, the only sound was the insistent wind running through the sparse silver strands of bushman grass – the ultimate desert comb-over. And of course, there was the ubiquitous crunch of teeth on breakfast bar.

  Because the horses only drink every 30 hours in summer and every 72 hours in cold weather, they might not have come to the waterhole that day. But we got lucky.

  They began appearing in single file from the west, the east and the mountain range in the north, all converging on the waterhole. A large troop of 17 arrived in orderly fashion, led by a powerful stallion in a golden palomino coat. His mares and children, including one newborn fuzzy colt with blonde streaks mixed into his dark mane, lowered their heads to the water and drank as he watched, completely aware of our presence.

  As each troop approached, it diffidently stood off a little before coming forward, as if observing some ancient dry lands protocol. The horses snorted and nickered to each other, ears pricked forward, sharing the previous night’s news. They drank their fill and stood in one another’s shade, heads down and eyes half-closed, perhaps waiting to enter a far-off world of dreams where the grass grew like Christmas. Some mouthed the dung of others.

  The wind had given many of the horses magnificent, flowing mane-dreadlocks. The young ones indulged in horseplay, chewing their friends’ manes and nuzzling their withers, rolling their eyes in mock outrage. Soon there were more than 40 desert horses before us, totally involved in their post-dawn rituals. We were in the very midst of a personal “breakfast Bruegel” of wild and legendary Namib horses.

  By 2004, about 140 horses were living in the ancient Namib, completely independent of humans except, of course, for the man-made waterhole they used each day. Scattered over 40 000 hectares of the Namib Naukluft National Park, how they came to exist here as the world’s only desert-living wild horses is still anybody’s guess. But, as with most mysteries, there is much speculation.

  Where did these marvellous mounts come from? The University of Kentucky says they’re mostly Shagya Arabians from Hungary, crossbred by German colonial forces in South West.

  To explore one of the proposed possible origins, you have to drive more than 150 km north-east to Duwisib Castle, which was built by Hansheinrich von Wolf in 1908. An aristocrat, artillery officer and lover of raucous parties, Baron von Wolf (with his American-born wife Jayta) bought the property and built a castle on it. And when you travel through Namibia, you’ll soon get used to these “schlosses” that pop up from time to time. But Duwisib is still one of the most remarkable.

  More than 20 ox wagons packed to the rims with furniture, building materials and fancy goods came from Lüderitz in the west. Master stonemasons and carpenters arrived from Europe, wells were discovered and sunk and a massive forge was built, which produced everything from horseshoes to the ornate wrought-iron latticework for the castle’s windows.

  All who write about Namibia seem to have theories about Baron von Wolf. Lawrence Green, perhaps in a post-World War II anti-German moment, paints the baron as being “drunk and eccentric, with a weakness for cards”. On the other side, Harald Nestroy, who was appointed German Ambassador to Namibia in 1998, has mostly favourable things to say about him in his written history of Duwisib, and clearly dislikes the tone that Green takes concerning Hansheinrich von Wolf.

  What amazed me, in reading about the Von Wolf clan at Duwisib, is how they managed to transport delicacies such as French cognac, German beer, “Russian caviar, ham, pastries and confectionery” all this way into the desert while Jules and I struggled to keep two-minute noodles, breakfast bars and rusks from joining the cosmic soup in the grub box at the back of our bakkie.

  Everyone agrees, however, that the baron was a colourful man, and that it is probably true that one night, with Jayta on an extended overseas visit, he drove his carriage 80 km to the town of Maltahöhe. Once there, he stormed into the hotel bar, pulled out his revolver and emptied it at the drinks display, maybe knocking out an overhead light in the process. He then politely paid for the damage and earned his reputation in history as “the daredevil baron”.

  There is also the legend of Jayta von Wolf’s cooking, which bears a brief mention. One day she took her new ladies’ shotgun out
on a solo hunt and brought down a bird. Proudly, she roasted it and dished it up to her husband when he came back from a country trip, which may or may not have involved some six-gun practice in a frontier drinking establishment. It turns out that the “roasted bird” was in fact a crow and the baron was less than pleased.

  Be that as it may, just before the beginning of World War I, Baron von Wolf started a horse breeding station at Schloss Duwisib. He doted on his horses, spending an inordinate amount of time and attention on their stabling. But, after he had left Duwisib and was killed in action at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, the fate of his horses was never recorded. Could their descendants be sloping about the Namib today?

  For the other theory, you have to read parts of Deneys Reitz’s Trekking On, where he joins Generals Botha and Smuts in German South West (now Namibia) at the start of World War I. Allied to England, Smuts and Co are fighting the German colonists and find themselves in a particularly challenging situation at Aus, where Jules and I recently had some very cold beers on a hot day.

  The Germans are well dug in; their position is almost impregnable. The South Africans, despite their vastly superior numbers, are at a disadvantage, restricted to the wide-open fields of the Namib with no element of surprise on their side.

  While the South African generals discuss strategy, their troops camp in their thousands at the nearby Garub waterhole, with the cavalry horses picketed in long lines.

  The Germans, determined to dilute the strength of any attack, fly over the South African encampment and drop crude bombs made of gunpowder, nails and horseshoes. They specifically target the horses to scatter them and succeed, with dramatic results. Dozens, maybe hundreds of horses, flee in terror.

  Deneys Reitz also recounts how the Germans used land mines to deter the South Africans:

  “I made early acquaintance with one of these mines, and it cost me the life of my horse Bismarck. I was coming from the railhead one morning, and overtook an infantry company plodding along. I rode chatting to the officer at their head when suddenly there was a roar in the midst of the soldiers and a column of smoke and dust shot a mile high, whilst fragments of metal went whizzing in all directions. When the air cleared, two men lay dead and a dozen wounded, and many others were temporarily blinded by the spurting sand.

  “My horse, stung by flying grit and pebbles, reared and plunged, and when I dismounted to help the injured, he gave a snort of terror, and wrenching free, headed straight for the waterless desert that lay westward for a hundred miles or more.”

  Jules later spoke to Telané Greyling, a young woman doing her doctorate on a management plan for the horses through a South African university.

  “I think it’s highly unlikely that the horses would have wandered this far south from Duwisib,” she said. “I’m almost certain they came from a combination of German Schutztruppe and South African cavalry.”

  When the area became part of the Namib Naukluft National Park in 1986, a solar powered pump was installed at the water source by the government. Underground water was pumped up for the horses, and a hide was added so that their drinking sessions could become tourist photo opportunities.

  In summer, when the plains grass is abundant, their survival seems effortless. But in winter they move slowly and their heads are always down as they search for Eragrostis grass. Sometimes they seem to be nibbling at nothing but gravel, and their energy levels are at a dangerous low.

  These horses have been through several drought-induced genetic bottlenecks. In 1992, they were suffering so badly from hunger that the Ministry of Environment and Tourism sold off 100 horses to eager buyers all over the African subcontinent. They supplied the remaining 80 with fodder. Telané Greyling and a friend bought 15 of them and brought them back to a riding school in South Africa.

  “We found they have a very passive disposition. That’s part of their survival strategy: they have learnt not to stress. If a domestic horse were dehydrated the way these horses are on a regular basis, they would die within two days, of stress, not dehydration. But the desert horses have adapted to being dehydrated regularly and to having sparse food. They’re philosophical. They accept their conditions.”

  The horses have also adapted to the heat. During the middle of the day, when temperatures can easily rise to above 40˚C, the horses turn their backs to the sun so that it shines only down the middle of their spines.

  Their harsh world means that only the very fittest survive. Foal mortality is high, in some areas as high as 90%, because the horses often have to move 40 km between grazing and water, and their stallion pushes them mercilessly. A foal with the slightest weakness or defect will become hyena food sooner rather than later.

  The horses have become so distinctive that experts have discovered a unique variation of blood type. Called the Q Factor, it is found in no other horse on Earth. It’s a kind of mutation.

  Telané has noticed that although the groups are small, one family might, mostly at the instigation of the mares, join another group. But the two stallions totally ignore each other, and service only their own mares.

  “The bachelor males can be loners, or pair up with one or two others,” she said. “Then there are the bachelors I call the Outsiders. Sometimes a bachelor will persistently hang around a group so long that the stallion tires of chasing him, and he’s grudgingly accepted into the group. But he’s never as charismatic as the stallion is and the mares don’t often take up with him.”

  Piet Swiegers, a long-time neighbour at Klein Aus Vista, begged us to tell the world not to “go offroad, looking for them”.

  “They’re wild horses. Treat them with respect.”

  In fact, no bundu bashing was required to get prime seats out there in the Garub waterhole hide. It was better than a soap opera. In fact, it was one of the finest free shows in Africa.

  Chapter 12: The Namib Naukluft

  Under a Gibbous Moon

  Sometimes you just have to love a word purely for the sound it makes, sliding out of your mouth: head-standing beetle; fairy circle; shepherd’s tree; sycamore fig; dusky sunbird; solifuge; camelthorn; ant lion; barking gecko; wedge-snouted desert lizard; striped mouse. And my personal favourite: Jennifer Lopez.

  Next, you have to sit down in the shade and allow those very words to conjure up images in your mind. Have a drink, let the pictures really sink in, and then drive out here, to the Namib Naukluft National Park, to see them all in action. Well, you may not catch sight of the shapely Ms Lopez, but she was here once. Some of her charisma remains, perhaps in one of those sinuous dunes out at Sossusvlei.

  The day had been a bit of a trek, really. Nearly 500 km of southern Namibia, from Lüderitz to the Sossusvlei Lodge at Sesriem. Lots of dirt road, dust and detours as we sped from the wild horses at Garub to the Duwisib Castle near Maltahöhe into the NamibRand Reserve and over moonscapes to this place.

  For years, I’d wanted just one night at this particular lodge, which stands at the entrance to the park. Its units were a strange combination of tent and blockhouse. The central building and watchtower rose like a desert Impressionist’s citadel into the star-studded sky, where the celestial celebrations were reaching some form of climax (they were definitely having God’s Oscars up there). And here we were, Jules passed out on the bed inside, exhausted from the drive, and me on the porch with a cold Tafel in my grubby hands.

  Barking geckos began having their way with the night. A coolth settled in over the Namib and washed away the intense heat of the day. I felt a streak of luck running through my bones, and rose to wake my wife.

  “Jules,” I whispered into her face as she slept, “whaddabout some cards?”

  I thought maybe I’d catch her groggy and, for once, beat her at gin rummy. So far, this trip had not yielded any winnings for me. Fish River Freddie was still waiting for his day in the rummy sun. Gamely, Jules surfaced and within the hour I was back on the porch, sipping a little morosely at my lager.

  But not for long, because a gibbous
moon rose over the lodge watchtower and I embarked on some rather ambitious night photography. Springbok ventured out of the moon shadows down to the waterhole in front of the lodge, looking like Namib ghosts on spindly legs.

  “What, exactly, is a gibbous moon?” I asked Jules.

  “It’s gibbous when it’s nearly full.” Not only lucky at cards, my wife, but smart with the facts as well. I slipped out to the bakkie, hunted down my Concise Oxford Dictionary and looked it up. There it was.

  “’gibbous (g-) a. Convex, protuberant; (of moon or planet) having bright part greater than semi-circle and less than circle; humped, hunchbacked.”

  (Author’s aside: And then there’s “gibbosity”, which, according to my Microsoft Spell Check buddy, is a totally bogus word.)

  With that small matter cleared up, we hit the sack and rose before dawn so we could catch fresh morning light on the dunes of Sossusvlei.

  The gate to the park opened at 6 am and we joined a queue of vehicles containing what sounded like the happy half of western Europe. Assertive Germans, excitable Italians, demure French and us, with our tickets and Sossusvlei Breakfast Specials (which, for the record, consisted of two mint ice creams). It sounds very wicked and weird, but being out there on Planet Dune was an off-world experience. And if there is no gravity, can there really be muesli? If you don’t make eye contact with yoghurt (especially the Fruits of the Forest variety), who’s to say it really exists?

  So picture this. In the distance are higgledy-piggledy mountains, towering red dunes and a hot air balloon rising up into the sky. You’re in a diesel bakkie that is hoarsely crying out for a new air filter. The dust of a long trip has crept into its lungs and it now sounds like Darth Vader in crisis. Your right hand is totally occupied with a fast-melting ice cream and suddenly the road has turned malignant, throwing up evil, wheel-wrenching potholes all over the place.