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Boundless 27 - Hands on the calabash

Boundless 27 - Hands on the calabash

Author: Kingsley Holgate
Date: 2018-06-08

Today marks the end of the World First Boundless Southern Africa Expedition, so we shovel sand over last nights fire, load up, one Landy behind the other in the dust and over the red sand tracks, past springbok, gemsbok and jackal.

In the diamond-mining town of Oranjemund, Shova Mike and Shaun escort our grimy Boundless Land Rover convoy to the mouth of the Orange River. Imagine the scene: seven Ministers of Environmental Affairs and Tourism walking solemnly in their finery onto the beach, where the river runs into the cold waters of the South Atlantic. Hands all holding the symbolic Zulu calabash that is filled with water from iconic wild places, we upend it as part of the 'end of expedition' ceremony.

This has been quite a journey for the much-travelled calabash. It holds Indian Ocean water from the start of the expedition and Tugela River water from the lip of Africa's highest waterfall high up on theDrakensberg Mountains. There are thimblefuls from the Bushman's, the Senqu, the Umhlatuze, the Umfolozi, Hluhluwe, Mkhuze and Pongola Rivers in KZN, and from lakes Bhangazi, St Lucia and Sibaya - part of the beautiful iSimangaliso Wetlands Park.

There is Mozambican water from the Futi Corridor, from a pan in the beautiful Reserva Especial De Maputo, and from the Usuthu River in Swaziland and the Crocodile, Sabi and the Oliphant's Rivers in the Kruger National Park. Sipfuls from Massingir dam in Parque do Naçional do Limpopo and from Gonarezhou, the Runde, Save and Mwenezi rivers. So many to mention - from the Luvubu at Crooks Corner and the Shashe as we swam and waded across to Greater Mapungubwe, the Limpopo and the floodedMakgadikgadi Pans, and from amongst the elephants and hippos of the Boteti River.

There are sipfuls from Nxai Pan, the Chobe, Linyanti, Zambezi, Kafue, Kwando, the Okavango, and the Tamelekane in Maun, from a pan in the massive Central Kalahari Game Reserve and from Khutse, Mabuasehube and Eland Pan in the beautiful Kgalagadi Transfrontier Conservation Area. The list seems endless: symbolic water from the warm baths spring at Riemvasmaak, from Augrabies and the Fish River Canyon, from the Orange and the warm baths at /Ai-/Ais, and finally, from Gabusib, where just yesterday, we added the last sipful from a natural rock reservoir hidden deep in the mountains of the Sperrgebiet.