To hell and gone. C. Johan Bakkes

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      She came walking towards me through the sand in the moonlight. I thought I recognised her. She was wearing a long, flowing dress, and a straw hat pulled deep over her eyes . . .

      It was a quarter to three in the morning and I was lying in my sleeping bag somewhere beside the lower Fish River in Namibia. I did not feel well – in actual fact, I felt extremely unwell. I knew from experience what was wrong – I was dehydrated. The desert sun and the gruelling days of hiking unremittingly over skull-shaped rocks, sand and boulders had taken their toll. My worn-out body, which I had systematically been reducing to ruin over the years, was protesting.

      Once again we were in the middle of an inexplicable adventure. Once again we had tackled the near-impossible. The idea had been to start at Seeheim and walk along the banks of the Fish River, through the canyon, to where it joined up with the Orange River – a distance of 300 kilometres. Even worse – all this had to be done in only ten days, in other words at a rate of 30 kilometres per day. Crazy . . .

      It was day nine, we had another 40 kilometres to go, and it looked as if the hike was over for me. I was losing fluid in every possible way. From the top, the bottom and even the middle. We had already lost Daan, and my comrades Kalie and Mario were anxiously trying to fill me up with fluids, for in that desert region they would either have to carry me out or cover me with rocks – no humans ever came there.

      I watched her approach through narrowed eyes. Was it time to be fetched? I thought I recognised her . . .

      My mind wandered . . .

      I saw her for the first time when she grabbed my hand somewhere on a cliff in the Witels. I was on my own, jumping, climbing and swimming to Ceres, doing what is known as “kloofing”. I had left the group behind. We were behind schedule, as we had been snowed in in the Hex River mountains. An urgent appointment had made me act irresponsibly. On a rocky ledge fourteen metres above the river a stone had become dislodged, my backpack had pulled me over the edge, but suddenly there was a handhold.

      I think she had brown eyes when she laughed.

      My bakkie had broken down somewhere between the Ugab and the Brandberg. My technical know-how is limited to fuel supply and spark. I’m buggered, I thought, I won’t get out alive. No one knew that I was there alone. Dejectedly I sat down on a rock, while she fiddled under the hood. With a laugh she shook her brown hair back, a greasy smudge on her nose.

      The mission hospital at Ngoma in Malawi had crawled with the sick and deformed. Malaria was consuming me piece by piece. I was pissing blood. Black water fever? it flashed through my mind. The bouts of fever came and went with monotonous regularity, and I felt that I was slowly becoming detached from reality.

      “Have you come to fetch me?” I asked her as she sat down at the foot of my bed.

      “Not yet,” she answered with a sad smile, one eyelid drooping slightly.

      This hike had been one of the toughest of my life. The terrain was merciless and the heat blistering – it descended from above just to be hurled back from the ground. We tried to get most of the walking behind us in the early morning, when the air was cooler. At noon we searched for any bit of shade that rock or boulder afforded, and continued later in a gentler sun.

      This river and its canyon remained one of the most remarkable places on our planet, and we found pleasure in knowing no one had ever tackled the route in this way before. The age-old rock walls and formations towered vertically around us. A small herd of Hartmann zebra looked inquisitively at the strange creatures hurrying through their world. We were ecstatic to discover that Namibia had another finger rock that no one knew about!

      The evenings were the highlight, however, when we threw down our rucksacks, lit a fire and poured a stiff drink. With the pleasure of camaraderie, we joked about the day’s hardships.

      But now I didn’t know – another hot day like today was going to break me. So near yet so far. Had I overplayed my hand at last?

      She knelt beside me.

      “It’s all right. Things will work out,” she consoled me. She took me in her arms, kissed me on the forehead and cried.

      And when the day broke, it was overcast and raining in the desert. And I walked to the bridge at the Orange River – “One-two-three, block myself” – and wondered if it had been her last visit . . .

      Calculate the cost