Staff Photographer
Don’t listen to those who sling a packet of biltong and a bottle of whisky into a backpack and head for the hills. For a successful hike, everything hinges on the planning and while you’ll be roughing it there’s no sense in suffering unnecessarily.
I’ve just walked down the Fish River Canyon in Namibia with eight other hikers and can report it pays to be well prepared, from planning meals to an extra pair of hiker’s socks.
It’s a hell of a trek from Johannesburg -— between 12 and 15 hours by car -— depending on how long you stop for lunch and what speed you’re prepared to drive at, on what must be the longest, straightest road in the country. A more elegant option would be to fly to Upington, and drive a further four to five hours to Namibia.
We stayed at the comfortable chalets of the Cañon Lodge in Namibia, which is a short drive from the canyon. Dinner, bed and breakfast came to R2 262,50 for nine people, but it’s more likely the lodge will win awards for its comfortable beds than its cuisine.
A driver from Cañon Lodge will also transport you and your backpack to the start of the hike and will pick you up five days later at the hot springs at Ai-Ais.
By any stretch, this is an epic hike. The moderately fit will manage fine, but if the only exercise you’ve had for years is opening the fridge door, be prepared for a slog. The Namibian Parks Board also wants to see a doctor’s note stating that you’re fit for the challenge. I wasn’t able to track down the exact number of fatalities, but there are many anecdotes of hikers expiring from heat stroke or heart failure.
We were dropped at a lookout point just as a large tourist bus lumbered away from the canyon. For the elderly tourists, this is as close as they’ll come to the canyon, which is laid out like a topographer’s map —- the kind I’d last seen in high school geography class. Half a kilometre below, the Fish River looked like an emerald ribbon as it snaked around a bend.
Our driver took a “before” photograph and then everyone shouldered their packs and headed over the edge. I somehow felt I wasn’t quite ready so I unpacked and repacked my backpack in a vain attempt to make it lighter.
There are chains and rods wedged into the rock at the very top of the trail, which provide hikers and perhaps the more intrepid tourists with some comfort, but these soon peter out as the canyon walls close in on you. My knees were trembling under the weight and effort of the descent and it became clear that any wrong-footed step would result in a fall with consequences of certain death or at least a horrific injury.
The Fish River Canyon is between 85km and 90km from end to end, so whichever way you look at it, you’re going to be doing a lot of walking. It’s almost impossible to get lost if you stick to the riverbank, but there are a number of shortcuts that take you away from the beaten track and into the desert badlands.
Here, footprints of other hikers are quickly erased by the wind and it’s easy to lose your way, as a number of our group did.
Much of the canyon’s floor is formed by fine, soft sand the colour of brown sugar and this eventually coats everything you possess. As thankless as it is to trudge through the sand day in and day out, it makes for a decent surface to sleep on.
More than anything, I thought of myself on the set of an old-style Western film. There are miles of red earth, grit and boulders, set against the stark beauty of the canyon walls and it didn’t take much imagination to hear the whine of bullets.
It also felt a little like a Raymond Carver story because we came across abandoned flotsam: a packet of Marlboros, an elastic leg brace, a camping stool and a half-finished jar of peanut butter left behind by other hikers.
After a long day’s walk, hikers are hungry and with a little planning instead of subsisting on Toppers and Smash, we decided to improve on the menu. We bought a number of small polystyrene boxes, or “fridges,” and then chilled or froze our food the night before we left. The fridges were then labelled, sealed with tape and put into a cooler box ahead of the hike.
The first night we had a vegetable breyani and Sri Lankan fish curry with coconut milk and on night two we braaied 2kg of deboned lamb and made a red pepper pilau. By night three the rump steak hadn’t turned and was nice and cool and on night four there was still a big bunch of basil and a chunk of parmesan for penne and pesto.
Almost everyone brought a flask of whisky, which helped to wash down the Myprodol.
On day five our Fish River canyon sojourn ended under the cover of darkness in the luxury of tents supplied by the Ai-Ais Namibian resort partnership. The reward was a cold Savannah and a T-bone steak.
Hiking is a lot like life —- right down to the truism that, if you choose companions with heavy baggage, let them at least have a good attitude while they carry the load.