The Gharib, which means great river, is on its final lap to the
sea. It flows through a desert
land known as the Richtersveel.
For the number of people, the hari has many meanings.
Outsiders know it as the Orange River, which is South
Africa's biggest river.
The bends in the river reminds one of the coils left
behind by a big snake.
On the spur of the big snake.
Our mission is to follow this river to its very end.
This week, the zebra bus returns for the last time to the northwestern
corner of South Africa, the Richtersfeld on the border
of South Africa and Namibia.
Hi guys, I'm Nicola Swabe from Kubus. I am Dehart from Lakers.
I'm Eloise from Kubbus. I am Judith Strauss from
Exfontein, and I am Lena Joseph from Sandro, and we are the youth
exploring our cultural landscape.
You must be.
You.
When
See ya, come wild with us.
Kiss of course a
long time no see, I've got a big favor to ask.
I've got these 5 young people who I need to take down the river
and I need Mkosa's help. The river can be rough and there's no
road in this section, and no one knows it better than Umkos. If the
livestock can do without Umkos for a while. This don't give birth.
I be. I
Oh.
So what we want to do is this, where the Fish River comes and joins the
reef, just below that point, there's a place one can reach the river
and there we want to put in a big raft and a canoe and we're gonna put
Okos in the canoe to lead this expedition and we want to
travel all the way to the river's end, and I think we can
do it with Okosa's help.
The Orange River, also known as the Karia is the
largest river in South Africa. So there's gonna be lots of adventure on this
one. OK
OK guys, here's the river, and way down there, I can
see some white water.
I'm
honey honey. Oh I see
we've quit.
To get to the river, we came down this valley. This is exactly where we
are right now. And if you look in that direction, you can see an
island and you can hear the rapid. This is where the
rabbits are. And below the rapids, there's this big pool here
and that's where I've heard the big snake lives.
We're gonna stop just before the rapid, and we're gonna scout and read the
water to make sure we understand exactly where to go. We're gonna use this
section to make sure you know how to handle the raft. Now what does a life
jacket do? It keeps your neck above the water, it must be tied on
very well. If we get to a difficult place and the
raft push against the rocks, the rock is not your enemy. Don't lean away from
the rock, because then the raft will flip. You actually lean towards the rock, then the
raft will be. If you fall out, this is very, very important.
Don't try to stand up. Your feet could get trapped in a rock and bend you
over. So what you do is you stick your feet up where you can see it, lie on
your back, and if the water is fast, it's only your that's gonna hit the rocks and
you'll be fine. Below each rapid, there's always a nice big
quiet pool and once you're in that pool, nothing can happen to you,
except you may feel something tug at you and it could be the big snake that
pulls you down.
OK guys, let's go for it. Gently
forward. Straightforward,
straightforward. OK,
hard for it, hard for it.
we're following you gently forward. We follow
Wiwes, so we get out before the rap it.
Hard forward so we can get out of this current. Hard forward. Don't worry, hard
forward, forward, forward, we're gonna get stuck on this
rock, hard forward. We're gonna bump it. We're stuck on the rocks.
OK guys, forward. Hard for
it We're stuck on a rock.
Hard, hard for it. Yes, now hard for it, really hard,
we should get stuck on the next rocks. OK, great. And we're gonna get
our deer and check that rapper out.
That's
Oh, I'm making.
Woman's lives now.
OK guys, where you don't want to be, if you get your line wrong, you don't want
to end up in those rocks. That's what we call a strainer. There you can really
get messed up. You want to be right here, the tongue, but
just there are 3 more rocks. So make your way over very, very
quickly to that side. And hopefully we'll miss those
guys.
they are far.
I.
OK, so.
or like
like rabbit does that all that he needs to hear what they the rabbit on when I
ya that from slam the
rabbit.
This is amazing. This is a life experience. I will never
forget. The youth of South Africa, try these things out, man.
Wow, this was very fun, especially when the water come into
my face. I was like, whoa, but it was very fun.
This is my first time doing this, but it was very fun. I enjoyed it.
Yeah, yeah.
We need to have a good look for a camping spot. We've just got a little bit of
sun left and then it's gonna be dark. We want those tents up next to a
fire, nice and safe because this is big snake territory.
It won't be. Hey I stupid.
Don't worry, it's dead. Let me make sure, no
shame. I wonder what killed it. do it.
You can come and have a look at it. Oh,
come and look at this very careful.
You can touch it smooth at the bottom and
rough at the top. Look at this. This is the tooth.
No, it's got 2. Here's another one. The venom glands sit
here and when it bites, the venom glands contract
and the venom passes through the inside of this vein like an
injection you get from the doctor. And here you
can see the tip of the tongue, and this is sort of a
a sheath in which the tongue moves in and out. And the tongue,
of course, is the way it senses its prey. It smells through the tongue.
And one should actually be very careful with a dead snake because even if that pricks
you, you can be in serious trouble. So for sure this puff adder
will become the food of something else. We're gonna leave it here
and if we were able to come back in a few days, something would have eaten it. It would
be gone. So this might be the closest we're gonna get to the
big snake. Unfortunately, it's dead. We put him
back exactly where he found him. I don't know what killed him here. I don't see
tracks around, but there's been too much wind. More people
get killed in Africa by puff adders than any other
snake. And ironically, the puff adder is a
very friendly snake. It won't move, it remains
dead still, and it's only when you step on it that it would bite
you. And that's where the danger lies, because the puff adder would lie in a
path and think it's camouflaged and won't move away
and then you step on it and then you're really in big trouble.
As we set up camp, snakes are on everyone's mind.
It did not take long for the big snake to rear its head again.
We're sitting next to the Orange River, the Gharib, and where it starts in
the highlands of Lesotho, there's a cave, a very, very dark cave. If
you go into it, you can see a drawing of a very big snake,
and as you travel down the river. The stories of the big snake become
more frequent and bigger and bigger, but it's really when you get to
Richtersfeld, that's where you really encounter the big snake and
people tell you about the big snake. Their father has seen it or their
grandparents have seen it.
So stories that come for such a long, long, long time,
from generation to generation, one wonders if there's not a little bit
of truth in them, and maybe we're lucky enough to see the big
snake, and you can go back and tell people about the big snake.
They might not even be alive. The big snake may have
taken them.
Thank you. More and more.
The wind started early that morning. And Opi was
eager to get going. At first, he
wanted to show us something very interesting. Look
at this amazing object in the river mud.
It's the skull of a giant catfish and
also another little piece in the puzzle of the big snake.
This would be a jaw, so it can easily. Some people
have said that if you actually swim in a pool, they can go and taste a little
bit. They're scavengers, so it's not impossible if a catfish was more than
2 m tall, which I've been told could be the length that they reach in the
Orange River. That means a catfish this tall. And you have someone like Eloise
swimming in a pool and he smells those feet and he nibbles on her
toe and then he grabs and pulls down. So it's not impossible
that giant catfish can drown someone. These stories about people
who go into the rib and end up drowning or disappearing, who
knows, maybe these giant fish could be an answer. This
thing it uses to pry things open and you can feel
how sharp it is. OK,
let's get going. You
OK, guys, have a look. It's actually the same distance as
yesterday, but we're gonna have the wind from behind and then there's gonna be another
big rapid. And below where we start is this dark deep
pool where those giant catfish live and there we're gonna stop and we're gonna
throw pinky in.
really do. I do.
the slam to my
solosurdudo
I say I say do arturdu. OK, here's a bit of waves. I say yeah.
OK
Let's go and look at this rabbit, I can hear it.
OK, long, long rap, it starts over there. Very
gentle, but there it's starting to speed up. That's where we can't make any mistakes.
There's a little bit of a hole. If we get into it, we'll spin, we won't flip. You
go straight to the middle of the raft and below it it's nice and
gentle.
Hard. There's a rope here. Hard, hard, hard forward. We're
gonna hit these rocks. Oh, it's all right,
ice forward.
gonna do I say
That.
might call it. She
Is yours all right.
What's gonna help. For the
clewaki
bang the rat on relief
nada. In the big
pools, the current hardly moved. Soon singing
was much nicer than rowing, and Oil liked his snaps,
probably dreaming of the big snake, his favorite if you ask me.
So it's all.
OK guys, let's pull in here. There's something very
interesting up in these rocks that you need to see.
Rocky cravings. The big snake and it's amazing at
the start of the way, way up near the tributary of the orange, a big
snake, and here again, a snake, thousands of years old. The people who
left these engravings were Khoisan people, the
ancestors of the first peoples of South Africa.
OK guys, look over there. Old, old graves, not as old as
the petroglyphs, possibly several 100 years old. Look at this
headstone. This is very characteristic of Borelswatt graves, and I've
seen similar stone in southern Namibia where the Borelswats live. And
once again it's proof that people lived on both sides of the river moving
back and forth and that the Richtersfeld and southern Namibia is one
big cultural landscape. But guys, there's a nice wind from the front.
We're near the mouth, so let's get going and finish off our trip.
OK, try and get some nice long reeds, especially ones
that still have leaves on them. This will help against the sun, and we make
our roof.
OK, Grace, Judith Elouise, you guys need to cut
a bunch of reeds equal length. The Amoare a
dakkibo
and I can act on canfas.
OK,
yeah, we need to work fast. No, no. Wow.
This is starting to look great. We need a bit of
leaves. Get another nice long breed that
we can weave through. OK, let's try and fit it, guys.
00, can you
blame, there's a very strong
wind blowing now. A bit more, bit more, bit more, um,
OK, stop, stop. You jump in, um, Judy, you jump in the front.
Nicola, your job is to hold on to this thing, hey. Guys, mind your
eyes with reeds. All of you hold on to to it. OK,
the loans. OK, hold on. And
we off. Try and hold up and paddle also raise, yeah, you need to
hold on to our shelter. We're only an hour or two from the mouth.
Harder, Nicola, harder, Nicola, harder, guys. Grace,
lift it up a bit. OK, I'm gonna turn
around. Fast forward, Judy.
Fast forward. OK, straight, fast forward,
fast forward. Everyone, fast forward. OK, let's
go. Let's go north. Or
let's go west. The mouth of the Orange River is just around the corner.
OK guys, I think let's throw this thing in the
river. We're not gonna go anywhere. We're being pushed upstream now by the
wind. Marlo and and we are going back to Sunrif.
Two of you must, must really peddle.
Market bloco last money bloto.
Yellowto. OK guys, we can beat the wind. We can beat the win.
Petrol.
We did not know it, but we were slowly reaching the river's end.
You can really hear the waves now, growling, but there's no current,
so we're completely safe. A little further in Opi tasted the
water. Can you taste the
water?
Water is brackish. We're in the estuary where the river meets the
sea and it's right there.
You can now clearly see the ocean, the last little bit of
sand, and then the Atlantic Ocean, the Benuela Current,
and we've reached the end of our journey, the end of the Ghari.
Let's pull over and we go and look at the mouth itself. I
knew that our adventure, like all good things, was coming to an
end. We had reached the Atlantic Ocean at the
river's mouth, a one of a kind place of great
beauty and ecological value. Opi told us why
this estuary is the most important
stopping over place for migratory birds because across from
here, there's no fresh water. That's where the Desert starts.
The next stopping over place is maybe 600 kilometers from
here. So when you fly across these desert lands, you're going to need this
water. Some birds live here all year round, and I think there's something
like 13 or so here in the Orange River mouth estuary that are in
the red data book, meaning birds that are very rare.
So it's very important that this site continues to survive.
A wetland of international importance,
irreplaceable. And if you remove this wetland,
you don't just destroy the wetland, you destroy those migration
routes, so it will have a very big effect.
We never found the big snake, or perhaps the entire
river itself is the big snake.
I suppose we will never know, but we have
seen great beauty and became much closer to
nature. Perhaps that is the biggest
gift that anyone can get. Um
Yeah