The road south
It’s a long 500km haul along the B1 between Windhoek, across the Hardap Region to Keetmanshoop, capital of the vast ||Karas Region – the country’s largest – the de facto capital of southern Namibia. Once the B1 has wound its way through the Aus Mountains, and flattened out in the unremarkable yet historically important town of Rehoboth, 100km down the road, there’s little in the way of engaging scenery to keep your attention as you stare across the roadside fences marking off huge commercial farms at the never-ending flat savannah lands that stretch eastwards into the Kalahari. It’s easy to be reduced to ticking off the 10km distance signs as you head towards your destination.
After Rehoboth, the next small town of note is Mariental, 180km further south, and then Keetmanshoop, another two hours’ drive beyond that. To the west, not long after you cross the regional boundary into the ||Karas Region, the impressive massif of the Brukkaros Mountain looms out of the surrounding plains, dominating the horizon.
Keetmanshoop
There’s little of obvious attraction in KEETMANSHOOP – or Keetmans, as many Namibians call it – but it makes for a convenient break in the long haul up or down the B1, and is a good place to pick up supplies if you’re heading out into the desert to camp. It’s the administrative centre of the vast ||Karas Region, which covers most of southern Namibia, and possesses a population of around 22,000. A former Nama settlement, it was named after Johann Keetman, a German industrialist who donated 1000 gold Marks to construct the first Rhenish Mission Church in 1869. After you’ve made a pit stop and eaten, you might as well swing by the church’s more modern incarnation to check out the museum.
Brukkaros – the false volcano
Visible over 80km away, as you speed along the B1 north of Keetmanshoop, the forbidding massif of Brukkaros looms out of the surrounding flat, parched plains, dwarfing the nearby Nama settlement of Berseba (!Autsawises), one of the oldest villages in Namibia. The original name for the mountain was Geitsigubeb, the Khoekhoen word for a leather apron, which they thought it resembled; this led to the Afrikaans combination of “broek” (trousers) and “karos” (leather apron), which resulted in Brukkaros.
Despite its imposing stature, it is often overlooked by tourists, but is well worth a detour if you like hiking, as it offers commanding views, fascinating rock formations and surprisingly good birding. In the colonial era, the Germans used the crater rim as a heliograph station; then in 1926 the National Geographic Society teamed up with the Smithsonian Institute and ran a solar observatory here for a few years.
For a long time it was assumed to be an extinct volcano, suggested by its squat conical shape and existence of a caldera. Yet it’s now thought to be the result of an enormous gaseous explosion that occurred around 80 million years ago: magma pushing upwards encountered groundwater, which then heated, vaporized and expanded, while pressure from the magma continued to build. When the Earth’s crust, which had been welling up, could no longer take the strain, it exploded, spewing forth rocks that now form the crater rim. Over time, the central area eroded away, leaving a scree-encircled caldera floor some 350m below the rim. Quiver trees are present, hosting the inevitable sociable weavers’ communal nest, and the area generally supports numerous bird species, particularly raptors; look out for black and booted eagles riding the thermals. The mountain also hosts the endemic Brukkaros pygmy rock mouse, though being nocturnal and minute, the chances of spotting one are not high.
Hiking to the Crater
After passing under an unlikely gateway announcing your arrival at Brukkaros, the road bends round a hillock to the former lower campsite and car park; most visitors leave their vehicle here, though it is possible to take a 4WD 2km further up the very rocky track to the upper campsite and parking area, but it’s a very bumpy ride. From the upper camping area, a narrow, steep, meandering path takes you up a further 1.5km to the lip of the outflow, marked by a rock waterfall, where you’ll only see cascading water after heavy rains. Here you can choose to explore the vegetated caldera, or make a sharp left turn to scramble a further 500m onto the rim itself, and soak up the breathtaking views. The vertigo-hardened might want to navigate a further 4.5km along an increasingly indistinct path round to the northern side of the rim, and nose around the decaying buildings of the abandoned research station, before taking the same route back.
Don’t hike on your own since there’s no mobile phone coverage and the walk involves a lot of boulder-hopping and rock scrambling, with the real risk of going over on your ankle. Make sure you have robust footwear, plenty of water and protection against the sun, as there’s no shelter along the way.
Arrival and information
Access is via the M98, signposted off the B1, 86km north of Keetmanshoop, and just south of Tses, signposted to the village of Berseba (!Autsawises in Nama), which lies 38km down the road, and where there are a couple of basic shops and a fuel station. About a kilometre before the village itself a poorly marked dirt road, the D3904 (accessible in 2WD), leads 10km up to the mountain. Theoretically, a community fee is payable upon entry, but there is rarely anyone there to take the money, as the community enterprise – including maintenance of the two campsites – has all but closed down.
Mariental
Rather like Rehoboth, to the north, MARIENTAL, the low-key administrative centre for the Hardap region, has little to detain the average tourist beyond the usual supermarkets and petrol stations for replenishing supplies and fuel. Indeed, it resembles a glorified industrial estate. That said, the town has several acceptable places to stay if you’re in need of a bed for the night, though there are lodges and reserves in the red dunes of the Kalahari, only an hour’s drive away that are infinitely more preferable if you’re looking for recreation.
In classic colonial fashion, Mariental, meaning “Marie’s Valley”, was named in honour of the wife of the first white settler, a William Brandt, though the notion of a valley was clearly somewhat fanciful. In contrast, the Nama, who had been around for considerably longer, called the place Zara-gaeiba, meaning “dusty”, aptly nailing the location’s defining characteristic. Indeed, on Sundays, the swirling dust is about the only sign of life in town.
That said, a 15km belt of lush commercial farmland west of Mariental runs parallel to the B1. The Fish River flows through the area from the Hardap Dam northwest of the town, and provides further water for irrigation. The farms focus on sheep, goats, game – especially ostrich – and dairy, as well as the production of alfalfa (more commonly termed lucerne).
Rehoboth
Surrounded by acacia woodland, the 30,000-strong town of REHOBOTH, situated just north of the Tropic of Capricorn, is of little interest to the casual visitor, though it is home to the fiercely proud Baster people, whose history is well explained in the local museum. The settlement had already had a couple of names before gaining its current biblical incarnation, thanks to a local missionary in 1844. Drawn by the natural hot springs in the area, a semi-nomadic Damara group that would visit periodically when water was scarce in the Kalahari dubbed the place |Gaollnāus (“Fountain of the Falling Buffalo”). This was later changed to |Anes (“Place of Smoke”), by a group of Nama, making reference to the steam rising from the springs. Even today, there has been an attempt to market Rehoboth as a spa town, though the baths have been closed for some time. Better recreational facilities can be found at the Oanob Dam, 7km outside town.
Rehoboth Basters
The Rehoboth Basters are one of a number of groups of mixed heritage which emerged in the Dutch Cape Colony in the eighteenth century and were forced by their non-white status to live on the fringes of white colonial society – they were among the many people who were later designated as “Coloureds” in apartheid South Africa and Namibia. They primarily share a mix of black African and European settler heritage that is reflected in the name they proudly bear (which is a corruption of “bastard”). Originally settled in the Northern Cape, the Basters began their great trek north across the Orange River in 1868, when new laws were introduced preventing Coloureds from owning land. Led by their own “Moses”, the Basters’ first Kaptein, Hermanus van Wyk, some 300 or so Afrikaans-speaking, devoutly Calvinist Basters eventually set up the Free Republic of Rehoboth, 100km south of Windhoek, in 1872.
Initially, the Basters were careful to maintain their neutrality in the simmering conflicts of central and southern Namibia. But in 1884, they became the first group to sign a “Treaty of Friendship and Protection” with the Germans and for the next twenty years they threw their lot in with the newly arrived colonial power, even supplying troops and assisting in the genocide of the Nama and Herero during the Namibian War of Resistance (1904–09). With the outbreak of World War I, the Basters reasserted their neutrality, only agreeing to enlist after having been given assurances that they wouldn’t be asked to fight their South African neighbours. In April 1915, the Germans ordered the Basters to guard some South African prisoners of war and retreat north away from Rehoboth or be disarmed. Around 300 Basters deserted their posts and, with their families, retreated to Sam Khubis, 80km southeast of Rehoboth. The Germans pursued them, and on May 8, 1915 confronted the Basters in the Battle of Sam Khubis. Outgunned all day long, the Basters were left without ammunition by nightfall, but their prayers were answered when the very next day the Germans were ordered to retreat in the face of the advancing South African army. It’s a divine miracle that has been celebrated every year since by the Rehoboth Basters.
With the end of the war, the Basters were keen to re-establish their autonomous republic but were thwarted by the new South African rulers of Namibia. In 1924, the Rehoboth Basters revolted, appointing themselves a new Kaptein – the South African response was brutal, sending in troops, bombing the town into submission and arresting over 400 Basters. From that low point, the Basters have been engaged in a long hard struggle to try and reclaim and hold onto their unique status, applying to the UN for help; they even eventually made a deal with the apartheid regime to create a Rehoboth bantustan in 1979.
After independence, the Namibian government took control of many of the Basters’ communal lands. Since then, they have been fighting an even more desperate rearguard action to try and win back the ancestral land which they originally bought off the local Nama, to preserve their culture – a case which looks likely to fail.
