issue 4 digital copy

Sustainable Tourism
FORMIDABLE
RICHTERSVELD…
WHERE THE EARTH’S CREATION BEGAN
By Stef Terblanche
I
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first spent time in the ever-alluring and enchanting Richtersveld
in the north-western corner of South Africa some years ago.
Waking up early one morning, on about my second or third
day camped beside the Gariep River, also known as the Orange
River, I was met by a ghost-like figure emerging in the distance
out of the early morning mist and desert dust. Josef Damroch
was his name, and he was covered from the tip of his hat to his
shoes in white-grey dust. The 60-year old had walked most of
the 40km from the settlement of Kuboes to tend to his livestock.
Behind him followed a flock of goats and sheep. And all around him, as
the sun shifted higher, opened up a vista of dark, rock strewn desert
mountains cascading down to a narrow stretch of sandy plain, covered
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in the only green vegetation for many miles. Running through this, the
river constantly changed its mood from rushing noisily down a series
of rapids to a sedate and almost motionless flow, with reed-covered
islands bursting with bird life in the middle.
For me this was the enduring image of the Richtersveld that has
remained with me ever since. Since then, nothing much has changed,
just as nothing has changed for centuries, and yet every day is different,
bringing new discoveries and surprises, with everything constantly
changing.
The locals like to refer to this special corner of the earth as the
place where God’s creation began. They may well be right, for
the Richtersveld National Park and the neighbouring Richtersveld
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