Rain in the Richtersveld Two.0 - Desolation & Dunes

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Paul, well, I am not sure what ritual Paul was busy with. Maybe he felt that if he lay in the dirt sufficiently, he would fulfil his quota of doing so for the day.

Whatever it was, it worked! Paul skipped down Holgat river like it was the N1.

 

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Once we had got everyone focussed on the task at hand, we rolled out of Oewerbos for the ride of a lifetime.

 

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We headed West along the Orange River, and then turned into the Nababeep National Park, for a track that runs right along the river. This track is a mélange of the sum of all fears for anyone on a motorbike - well for me at least.

It started with deep silt, nice fine silt, nice and deep.

That gave way to rocks, carefully graded to have the same sizes in each area. Ok when they are all fist sort of size, less ok when we are at adult head sort of size.

Then deep coarse sand. And on it went. It threw everything at us and it was glorious riding!

 

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See! Silt deep enough to catch the indomitable Lohan.

 

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Once our forearms were on the brink of surrender, the track ended. We headed out in search of Holgat river.

 

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The track out wandered along, across, in, in and across all manner of dry river beds. Each nice and twisty to keep our speed down.

 

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Those dots are not bugs, but bikes. Insignificant in this majestic wilderness.

 

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Last year this valley looked like a scene from Avatar. This year the rains had not been quite as kind.