The Augrabies Falls Nationwide Park is a stony, otherworldly place. When the Orange River is in full flood, the unrelenting roar of the falls may be heard kilometres away.
Within the late South African journey author TV Bulpin’s estimation, there are six nice waterfalls on this planet. Of those, some are female of their pure magnificence – the Victoria Falls being “Queen of all of them”, along with her delicate, intensely inexperienced, personalised rainforest.
The Augrabies, alternatively, is “is basically masculine – ruthless and brutal in a harsh and fearsomely arid panorama”.
Its title is from the Nama phrase !oukurubes, which suggests “the noise-making place”. When the Orange River is in full flood, the unrelenting roar of the 56-metre-high Augrabies falls may be heard 40km away.
The Orange River is an enchanting waterway, winding from its supply within the moist highlands of the japanese Malutis and Drakensberg mountains by the new semi-deserts of the Karoo and Kalahari to the icy Atlantic. Nowhere is the river extra spectacular than right here, within the Augrabies Falls Nationwide Park.
Augrabies has lengthy intrigued diamond hunters. There are enduring rumours {that a} fortune in diamonds has washed down the river over aeons, accumulating within the enormous and harmful pool slightly below the falls. Curiously sufficient, an historic Nama legend has it {that a} Nice Snake lives on this “surprise gap”. It has…