A Drink of Dry Land by Chris Marais

Author:Chris Marais
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Two journalists – passionate about travel and the ‘vast, dry cathedral called Namibia’ – set out to meander through this land and to relish the pure space and the joy of road travel. The journey shaped up as something special. Along the way, thirty years of memories returned. Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit encountered a landscape like no other, a seemingly barren place of unexpected and unrivalled beauty: from the enchantment of the Kalahari to the misty shipwreck world of the Skeleton Coast and up to the frontiers of the Caprivi Strip. Somewhere between Otjiwarongo and the silver pans of Etosha, they fell under the spell of cheetahs. With insight, sensitivity and great humour, Chris and Julienne share the stories and the secrets of these dry lands. You are invited to take the third seat in their bakkie. Sit back and enjoy the ride.
ISBN: 9781920545567
Publisher: Random House Struik
Published: 2012-06-22T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16: Cape Cross

Belly Safari

With two cameras slung about my neck and a greedy eye on the lichen fields north of Swakopmund, you couldn’t blame me for what happened next.

The exquisite otherworld of the fabled lichen fields had been sensibly fenced off to prevent visiting 4x4 heroes from driving onto them and making almost indelible tracks that would remain there for many years to come. I know. I saw them in 2004 – the same tracks I’d seen a decade earlier.

I parked our bakkie at the roadside and clambered over the barrier to find myself a metre of lichen to photograph up close and personal with a 105-mm macro lens. Only to be snared on a cable coated with a thick layer of black, tarry grease that rapidly adhered to all parts of me. I looked across at Jules and laughed, because she, too, had turned into a tar baby. Shit, and we were due to check in to a smart lodge shortly. What would they think?

“Well, we’re here now,” I told my wife. “And we’re already dirty. We may as well stay and make the best of it.”

Which we did. In the billowing mist, the orange Teloschistes capensis – a fluffy, strange and rare kind of lichen that can grow as high as ten cm, which makes it a giant among its peers – was as bright as a cartoon lawn. And there was even some good news lurking in those dreaded old 4x4 tracks: the Teloschistes had begun to colonise the hollows left by the tyres of some crazed brandy-drinker of the 1960s, using their slight depressions for protection against the elements.

“They’re probably getting a lot more moisture down there,” said a jubilant Jules. “They’re living on fog drops.”

Down in Lichen World, I saw a tiny fishmoth wiggle its way out of sight. A beauteous black-and-white beetle acted like a little Damara drama queen by sprinting across an open space and diving into the nearest clump of lichen as if pursued by something fast and very fierce.

Lichen is an astounding substance, and we’ve found no better place to appreciate it than Namibia. It is an “extremophile”, living in the most desperately inhospitable environment, enduring for millennia until favourable conditions allow it a brief window to grow or reproduce. Talk about lean patches in your sex life. The noble lichen has to be respected just for that. When a clump of lichen sidles up to you and says, “I haven’t had sex for centuries,” you’d better believe him.

We photographed some of the long-suffering lichen and then returned to the vehicle by contorting ourselves to crawl under the greasy cable. Driving north on the Salt Road, we came upon a peculiar settlement in the middle of the coastal sands. There was no sign to identify this place, but it looked like a deserted weekend-fisherman’s paradise. Intrigued, we drove around past prefab houses eccentrically painted in Fanta Grape, Cream Soda, Chocolate Brick and Chez Guava.

One house was built out of three shipping containers.

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