BORDER PATROL

Having read about it over four years ago on a forum one evening, the Namakwa Eco Trail has been eluding me ever since. While living vicariously through the photographs of others’ adventures is better than not at all, we simply had to go ourselves. Through all my travels with SA4x4, no other trail in South Africa promised to be so remote, long, and beautiful, so off we went, hunting silence.

The route technically starts along the N17 highway at a tiny settlement called Witbank on the Orange River near Pofadder. Instead of this standard direction, we decided to do the trail backwards, beginning on the coast at Alexander Bay. From there we’d pick up the narrow tweespoor track that characterises most of the trail and follow the backs of old ‘Toyota’ and ‘4x4’ signposts, while occasionally consulting an outdated T4A map and the provided pamphlet.

The trail should take two to four days, depending on what you’d like to see and if you’re in a convoy or not and, while there are some very tricky sections requiring low-range first gear, all