Well I have spend many hours in my 20 years of existence pondering on that question.
And I am quite sure my dad also thought about it after finding himself on a god-forsaken dirt road in the middle of no where, with nothing but desert around him.
It was my idea to hike from Upington to Kakamas on the R369 route in the northern cape. I've read this article in the GO! magazine written by Dana Snyman on how he spent the weekend exploring the forgotten sights of the green-Kalahari. That little stretch around the orange river.
I knew this would be an amazing challenge to complete, especially in the summer. After all I still needed to get even with my father for the "beydag cycle tour" fiasco.(more on that another day)
As I proposed the idea to my him I immediately noticed that I triggered his adventurous side.
The plan was to hike the 90km's in 5 days.On our first night we will camp in the outskirts of upington, second night at oranje resort, then for the following 2 nights somewhere in the wild preferably with enough water supply.
Surprise, surprise.... Nothing happened according to plan, except for sleeping outside Upington and at Oranje resort, but that disturbingly tiring stretch was suppose to be the easy part.
Upon our late arrival in Upington we were unwillingly demonstrated on how 2 gay hobos can perform their lovemaking skills in the doorstep of a shop. needles to say I haven't seen such a disturbing sight (on accident ) in my life before.
Our next challenge was to pass a group of teenagers who decided to block the main road and throw a spectacular party for anyone who gave up on trying to pass with their cars.
Eventualy we managed to find an empty cement damn on a deserted piece of land. It was the perfect spot to sleep. We didn't carry any tents with us so while we are surrounded by humanity we needed a place out of sight to secure our belongings.
Neither one of us could possibly comprehend what challenges tomorrow and his tomorrow would bring. It might as well be for the better because I doubt we would have gone any further had we known.
I will conclude part 1 of this epic journey through describing our long walk to a far oasis known as Oranje resort. We started the day before sunrise, we knew that walking in the middle of the day would be suicidal, yet we still ended up doing it. You see the average shade temperature in the green Kalahari during summer is about 40C-45C. The problem is, there ain't many trees in the so called green Kalahari. just some useless scrubs. The other amazing fact is that black tar and sunshine together isn't that cool either. So for the first day of hiking we managed to fry our selves from above and below. There was no escape.
After spending 12 hours on the road walking just 20 km's we arrived at the beautiful, green and lush oasis of Oranje resort, situated on the banks of the Orange river. we were quite dirty sight to behold. People came up to us asking what the hell are we doing? For some reason there was a general consensus that we were German tourist...
Out of charity this one familly gave us a 1kg packet of boere wors and at a abandoned camping site I found a half empty 2 ltr coke and soda water. As my dad went to relax at the river with his fly fishing rod I walked around the camp-site to find people whom we can braai with.
The next morning before dawn, we vanished as quickly as we appeared. The Oasis would be the last of his kind; well that's what we thought. But our journey would offer us many unexpected surprises.
Some for the worse but most for the best.
The main focus of this challenge was to survive everyday as it happened in our lives.
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