A Twist of Sand

All Africa's pent-up hatred of man, of his ways, the cities he has thrown up out of steel and concrete on the veld, of his roads and railways through which her wealth and secrets have been won, stands at bay, fangs bared against the last intrusion, here in this remote corner of the continent called the Kaokoveld. Round her skirts she has gathered the last untamed remnants of her once countless herds of antelope, giraffe, zebra, lion and elephant.

She stands at bay with her back to the wild sea and her face to the impregnable mountains. Man is puny against this concentrated might of Africa. The Matto Grosso is as well-known as Piccadilly compared to the Kaokoveld. Only a few of the men who dared to enter have ever lived to tell what they saw, and that has been little enough.

The bus was running more easily now on the hard desert road. When the winds blow, sand will cover the surface to a depth of a couple of feet within forty-eight hours. One of the principal expenses of roads -- and railways -- is the need to keep shifting the sand away from them, season after season. It is a stark reminder that if man's hand were taken away for only one year, there would be few traces of his occupation left. With the increased speed, the grains of sand spurted in the cracks of the steel floor, but fortunately the hot diesel fumes joined the swirling dust-cloud which marked our path towards Swakopmund.

Upon Mark and myself the Kaokoveld exercised its lure. Sitting in the jolting vehicle, my mind went back to the end of the previous winter. Mark and I had wished to make a trip northwards to the Cunene and return via the great mass of swamps and tributary channels which flow into the great lake of Etosha, probably the finest game reserve in the world, where one counts the buck in herds of thousands. There the elephants, homeward-bound across the sand-dunes, link trunk to tail in a "train "which may be a furlong long!

A peremptory official "no "cut across our plans; such was the suspicion of officials that we even wanted to go to the Kaokoveld for no well-defined purpose, that we decided it was useless to try and press it. Instead, we took Mark's Land Rover and made for a great tableland of unexplored mountains and peaks along the southern border. It was from a peak 5,000 feet above the Hoanib River that I first saw the wild tangle of mountains and gullys, shimmering, reflecting, changing colours like chameleons in the mica-ridden air. The isolated peak, which had taken us from early till mid-morning to climb, jutted up on a high peninsula which stood out towards the "river "on its southern side. Using my powerful naval binoculars I could see the green of the tiny settlement of Zessfontein fifteen miles away on my right; on my left the air was clear and one could almost detect the clean sparkle of the sea -- a glimmer of white moving, changing, reflecting, seemed to be the remorseless surf shattering itself against the coast, with the whole force of the South Atlantic behind it. Far away below on my left a ragged herring-bone pattern of gullies marking its backbone into the mountains, I could see the "river," the dry sand merely being whiter and more defined than the surrounding dun to which the eyes were accustomed. A 4,000 foot clill' beyond, we had decided were the Geinas mountains, but it was impossible to fix them for the Kaokoveld has never been surveyed.

"Moses viewing the promised land," remarked Mark.

"Like hell!" I replied. "Why would anyone want to go there?"

"For Mallory's reason -- 'because it is there'," replied Mark.

He scanned the forbidden land with his own glasses.

"Why shouldn't we go on?" he said impetuously. "No one would know. We've both wanted to -- look at it!" he cried with a wide sweep of his arm.

"Let's call this a reconnaissance in force," I said, for I had no wish to get tied up with the authorities. "We'll get there -- one day."