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Travel - Sendelingsdrift and Beyond - Boundless 26

Travel - Sendelingsdrift and Beyond - Boundless 26

Author: Kingsley Holgate
Date: 2018-05-25

Just 7 days to go. Two Landies at a time, out of Namibia and into South Africa, we cross the Orange on the Sendelingsdrift pontoon, camp on the banks of the river and then zigzag across the rugged Richtersveld mountains for a community day with the Nama.

It all happens in the church square at the village of Kuboes. The community endorse the expedition Scroll and the pictures from the kids' art competition show the dramatic mountains and the colourful and unique succulent plants and radiant flowers that make the park a botanist's wonderland - and one of the richest plant hot-spots in the world. We sleep in some Nama huts - a beehive shape of bent sticks covered in woven grass mats.

We can feel the pace. Back into Namibia into the diamond-rich Sperrgebiet from the mining town of Rosh Pinah, we now huddle around a small hardwood fire. "Of all the parks I've worked in over the past 30 years, the Sperrgebiet is my favourite. I love its extremes," says Trygve Cooper, chief warden of the Sperrgebiet Park.

And so after more than a 100 days, fifteen and a half thousand kilometres, malarial fever, millions of tyre revolutions, hundreds of campfires, buckets of sweat, over 30 community events, art competitions and soccer games, the expedition members finally stand at the scenic Bogenfels Rock Arch on the rugged coastline of the cold South Atlantic in the pristine and virtually untouched 26,000 sq/km Sperrgebiet.

Our arrival here coincides with the de-mystification of over a 100 years of history in which this great forbidden diamond area closed to but a few has recently been proclaimed a National Park.