A shiny sheet of water, with green grass all around. Sacred ibises patrol the shallows while tens of Egyptian geese, a lone red-knobbed coot and a pair of dabchicks patrol the middle of the dam. A watery landscape is the last thing I thought I’d see in the Kalahari, 50 km north of Upington.
Paul and Riana Loots farm on Uitsig, and also run Kalahari Guesthouse, Camping & Farm Stall. My plan was to camp, but Riana told me about their tented units. Their homestead (where the guest rooms and farm stall are situated) is west of the R360, but the campsite and bush camp are both on the eastern side. One moment I was driving through three-thorn shrubs, then I came around a bend and there was the farm dam in all its glory.
The dam isn’t quite full, but it’s a clear testament to the good rain that fell in the late summer of 2021. Now it’s just before sunset and I’m standing at the water’s edge with my camera. On the gravel dam wall to the west, overgrown with thorn trees, massive flocks of red-billed quelea are taking turns to have quick drinks in smaller sorties. A few blacksmith lapwings are overhead, their metallic calls mingling with the squashedtrombone squawks of the Egyptian geese. The scene makes for an unexpected dusk: colourful, alive and cacophonic.
To Noenieput
After coffee, springbok biltong and a taste of Riana’s home-made tsamma melon jam, I say goodbye to the friendly people of Uitsig and turn back south on the R360, but only for 9 km. I soon turn west again where the sign says “Noenieput”, and I zero my odometer.
This gravel road to Noenieput was the original R360. In the 1980s, the more direct road from Upington to Askham (and what was then the Gemsbok National Park) was tarred, it got dubbed the R360, and poor Noenieput was relegated to the most back road of back roads.
The area I’m driving through now, so Paul Loots told me
