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The Namib
Muzette, and the eternal mildness of joy
He was a thoroughbred gelding with a thoroughbred fool on his back, saddled with the task of carrying me 400km across the Namib Desert.
Muzette, a Lippizaner, stood 14 proud hands high, with a coat as white as a bleached zebra skull on the unforgiving Welwitschia Plains. On our first meeting at a Namibian horse ranch 65km south-west of Windhoek I strode up to greet him, whispered an introduction in his ear and gave him a hefty rub on his neck. I was full of false bravado and doing a pretty good Roy Rogers impersonation, but when he looked down his nose at me disdainfully I realised the road to Swakopmund was going to be paved with pain and adversity.
I didn't let on to that the last time I had taken a horse out of a paddock was over 30 years previously or that Tickey the Shetland pony had had the measure of me and repeatedly thrown me off. But I think he knew.
Within an hour of setting off for the coast, leaving the spectacular purple-blue Khomas Hochland Mountains behind us, Miziette and I had reached an amicable agreement - we would stick together at the back of the pack - that way he would expend less energy and everytime we trotted or cantered I would not embarrass myself in front of my infinitely more experienced riding companions as I hung on to anything bouncing around less than I was.
I became an ace backmarker, a sort or rear-admiral of the fleet and an expert at deciphering distant dust clouds left by my desertmates who were invariably just over the horizon. By the end of the trip I could ride into a trailing dust cloud and just by chewing the grit between my teeth I could tell how many people had past that point and when, and in which direction they were heading ...
For the first two days the plateau teemed with springbok, zebra, kudu, gemsbok ... and thorn trees. Miziette had a barbed sense of humour and at every opportunity (and there were many) he would veer towards the hostile Kameeldorings (Acacia erioloba) waiting in ambush or the even more vicious wag-’n-bietjie bushes (Ziziphus mucronata) which bear deadly pairs of straight and hooked thorns. The straight thorns impale an unsuspecting rider and the curved ones make sure you don't leave without a few scars.
Within a few hours my jodhpurs were ripped and the outside of my forearms bloody, the inside of my thighs chafed and obscure muscles in my legs were crying out for mercy. Muzette and I kept chasing the elusive cloud of dust left by the other riders and by the time we arrived in camp on a neck overlooking the Hokas Mountains on the first evening I was dust-caked, sun-baked and saddle-sore.
I dismounted, bow-legged and started the evening routine of unsaddling my good horse, taking off his bridle, putting on the halter, giving him a drink, letting him roll in the sand and then taking him to his assigned sleeping area on the picket line strung between two vehicles, before flopping down exhausted in a folding chair around the camp fire.
Men make plans and God laughs they say and as I gestured feebly for a cold Windhoek Lager from the confines of my chair I felt that the powers that be had decided that I was not going to make it to the coast - not on the back of a horse anyway.
However, later that evening a minor miracle occurred - the beer took its effect, the sizzling gemsbok steaks on the braai gave me new life, and after innumerable campfire belly laughs, I tossed my head back and looked up at the clear Namib nightsky and realised my stars were going to be good to me after all.
If I'd just had one more whiskey I would probably have recalled the words of Herman Mellville: "..And while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in the eternal mildness of joy."
I could feel the desert and the ocean calling and I was excited by the force of their pull.
After that the days passed in a wondrous blur. We crossed the Hakos Mountains which at times were so steep the horses had to be walked up and down the passes. When we traversed river beds the boulders were large and uneven, and concentration was required to help the horses keep their footing and ensure that one of our own feet did not end up as a mash of splayed toes bearing the imprint of a horseshoe.
As we left the mountains behind us the vegetation gradually thinned out, to be replaced by red sands and golden grassy plains stretching to the horizon. The hostile thorn trees retreated, aching limbs became hardened and chafed areas calloused. As we dropped down off the escarpment the nights became warmer and the fireside stories taller and one very late night (about 9.15pm) the 'Not-So-Useful Whiskey Club' was established with plans to make the planet a better place. As it turned out, the world we were in was perfect and we didn't see any reason to tinker, so we just existed, laughed and drank a little more.
As we meandered our way westward even the grass gave up its battle against the relentless sun and heat, only lichen surviving on the blackened rocks. We made our way down into the dusty Kuiseb Canyon, and enjoyed a lunch of lamb ribs followed by icy home-grown rhubarb and custard. Someone passed around a bar of Toblerone chocolate and we sipped on Cognac. A few weary riders, sitting upright in their chairs, were lulled into a content sleep by the midday concert of insects and my mind wandered to a book I had read some years before, The Sheltering Desert.
Events had taken place right where we sat but conditions had not been quite as easy for the two young German geologists Henno Martin and Hermann Korn who sought refuge in the desert when they were threatened with internment during World War II. They hid their lorry under an overhanging rock and together with their dog Otto and a few tame lizards (which they befriended by feeding them insects) they survived on the sparse game and plants. A welcome supplement to their diet was some carp they found in a drying pool which had escaped from a farm upstream and were barely alive but edible.
After nearly two and a half years Korn became so ill that Martin took him to a farm where he was transferred to hospital in Windhoek. There Korn's friends persuaded him that Martin could not possibly survive in the desert alone so he told the police about their hiding place. They were both arrested and charged with a battery of offences including: failure to notify a change of address, failure to pay a dog licence, failure to pay motorcar tax, failure to hand in weapons according to wartime regulations, the illegal shooting of game and so on. The magistrate who tried them had sympathy for their plight and only imposed a series of small fines.
Soon after we left the Kuiseb Canyon the ground firmed and we shook off the effects of our long, lazy lunch by cantering across the hard plains, gliding effortlessly across the jewel-encrusted desert floor. Tiny alluvial pebbles fanned out in braided streams below our horses' hooves and shimmered in the reddening afternoon light.
Over the next few days we were fortunate enough to encounter a horned adder, took to our hands and knees to observe the desert chameleon's behaviour and were enthralled by the antics of the 'big chickens with long legs' (an East German's description of the ostrich). We stopped to pay tribute to the gnarled 2000-year-old Welwitschias, marvelled at the horizontal aloes lying face down on the baking rocks and admired the tiny white flowers of the desert edelweiss.
s we dropped down into the Swakop River Valley passing through Moon Landscape we passed once proud but now abandoned farms as the river had been dammed upstream. We camped at the formerly prospering Goanikontes and then all too suddenly the horses' ears picked up as they smelled the cold sea air from the Atlantic Ocean - which to them meant a well-deserved rest and a chance to recover. To us it also meant the end, not of a holiday but of an experience few will rival.
Before I left Cape Town I had said to a friend that crossing the Namib would be a pleasant once-off equine experience for me and that when I returned he would be welcome to take over the jodhpurs I had purchased for the trip.
However, that was before I galloped bareback along the beach, trotted on the copper-burnished badlands and ambled along at a leisurely walk across the floor of a queen’s ballroom, taking in a 360 degree view from under my wide-brimmed hat, while soaking in the magic of the desert.
I'll give my friend my motorbike helmet or my car or something, but I'm keeping my ripped jodhpurs for the next ride. I think if Muzette knew it would bring a wry smile to his face.
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