Landscape in Northern Cape

Landscape in Northern Cape

The colors of the landscape cannot go unnoticed. They are blue, green and orange - the more orange, the more we go to the north. A new color is added in the color palette - white - but it is only rarely seen. The bright sunlight from mid-sky gives its own glow to the hues of the environment, they are just rippling.

Driving from Kimberley to Askham, I notice that desertification is gradually increasing, though orange sands are still covered by thin green grass. My attention is drawn to the softly rolling landscape that opens on both sides of a straight black asphalt road. The small hills appear to be like green waves spreading into the distance. They continue to the Namibian side, where they become sand dunes. But we are not going to go there to look at them.

There and here you can see grazing sheep or cattle, sometimes also antelopes. What cannot be seen are scorpions, spiders and other bugs that are teeming on the pastures. For random walkers they can be dangerous, not to even mention snakes. The map given to the visitors in the National Park warns that a certain poisonous species of scorpion is attracted to the warmth and glow of the campfire and will come close to it. If a visitor is not aware of it and is not alert, it may be an unpleasant encounter and could, in the worst case, lead to an urgent hospital visitation in order to rescue a person's life.

The landscape is dotted with small trees. Later, I get to know that they have gender: according to the San-people, trees that start branching from low are females and single-hulled trees with wide branches are male. Whether they have gender or not, they are vital to the region's ecosystem. Therefore, no giraffes will be allowed to enter the area, and occasionally those having gone astray there will be caught immediately and transported elsewhere, for otherwise they would eat everything - the trees are their delicacy.

The wavy landscape changes from time to time to a perfectly flat area. At first I think it is a shallow lake, but the flickering area is not water but saline. I was told that there are plenty of them in these regions and in Namibia, the largest are with diameter of up to 60 kilometers. Later, we could drive on such a plateau, and to my astonishment the soil turns out to be rock-hard. On the same trip, I am surprised by the sudden change of weather: Completely calm weather grows rapidly so windy that the utensils do not stay on the pick nick table. However, even in windy weather, the salt plain at night is an excellent place for observing the stars –Milky Way rises majestically above us. The viewing experience is slightly disturbed by a bright moonlight.

Pirjo Puurunen

Photographer, University Lecturer

University of Lapland