NEUS GORGE IS THE MOST UNKNOWN BUT ADVENTUROUS RIVER GORGE IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

With their rocky, shallow beds, South Africa’s rivers have never been regarded as navigable highways. Instead, they have constituted barriers to overland crossings. The Orange River is the most prominent example, with its alternating raging floods or tricky fords in times of drought forming the classic frontier barrier to expansion during the 18th and 19th centuries.Like all frontiers, the Orange attracted its share of bandits, runaway slaves, warring groups and reckless adventurers, drawing the ire of faraway authorities who set about taming the badlands of the Orange, especially in the southern Kalahari. They sent in troops, officials, missionaries and merchants in the wake of these wild men.Today if you canoe or raft the river anywhere between Upington and the border town of Onseepkans, you will be traversing the dozens of densely wooded ‘pirate islands’ once haunted by Koranna raiders. In the 1860s the Cape government sent a punitive expedition to deal with them, but ultimately it was the influence of church and commerce that brought peace.Upington, the regional centre, originated as the Olyfenhoutsdrift Mission Station which today houses the Kalahari Orange Museum. A remarkable life-sized bronze statue of a donkey in front of the museum celebrates the animal that has hauled generations of poor bywoner families in carts.  You still see them bouncing along back roads and trundling down tarred highways.Modern two-seater Crocodile inflatables and plastic kayaks are the river’s equivalent of donkey carts: go anywhere, carry anything, and mosey along taking in the surroundings. To do the Kalahari by river is to break with historical tradition and go with the flow, rather than merely treating the river as a hindrance.There are several river trip options – the Upington-Louisvale stretch is mostly on mild rapids; Neus Gorge at Kakamas, and the Augrabies Rush which ends just above the falls, are popular whitewater rafting routes.However, there is one section that should only be attempted by extreme adventurers: from below Kanoneiland, past Keimoes, to the Neus weir above Kakamas, the channels are narrow, reed-filled, overhung by trees, and full of rocky drops, ideal for pirates but not a proposition for recreational river-runners. William Dicey’s wonderful Orange River canoeing memoir, Borderline (Kwela Books, 2004), describes how he nearly ended up going over the cataract called Miggie Falls.Some of the largest samples of prehistoric human skeletons in SA have been unearthed by archaeologists in the Keimoes section of the river, throwing light on the biology and culture of the Khoi people. This frontier area of the Orange, called Einiqualand by the aboriginal inhabitants, has been the scene of migrations and conflicts for many centuries. As a thirstland flanked by Kalahari red sands to the north and hard grey Namaqualand rubble to the south, the Orange River has always drawn nomads and their herds to its water.Neus Gorge begins at the foot of the dramatic, though little-known, Neus Falls and winds through black, red and yellow cliffs that plunge straight into the river. The half-day rafting run from below the falls involves a couple of tricky rapids – here the skills of professional rafting guides are needed for safety and rescue – and ends on the farm Baviaanskranz. Piled stone forts are in evidence on the farm, remnants of the Five Shilling Rebellion. It was in this broken country in 1914 that a Boer rebel called Manie Maritz led the rebellion against the Union of SA government of Botha and Smuts. History further unfolds across the arid landscape. The rugged volcanic plateaus and gullies of Riemvasmaak lie on the north bank of the river, and here you can truly believe that the name ‘Riemvasmaak’ comes from ‘tighten your straps’ on the donkey cart for the rough ride into town. During apartheid, the people of Riemvasmaak were forcibly removed to the Eastern Cape, but in the mid-1900s they returned, thanks to a presidential project under the new democratic government.Below Kakamas the river is fairly placid for a while, then speeds up with exciting rapids as it heads for the Augrabies Falls. Here you can do the Augrabies Rush, a half-day guided rafting trip which lands you at the entry to the Augrabies Falls National Park. Tighten the straps on your river donkey – you’re in for a bouncy whitewater descent!