29 March 2008
A hardy group of surfers dig for liquid gems on the desolate Diamond Coast. By Ross Frylinck.
Cape Town surfers have been enchanted by rumours of perfect, uncrowded waves in the Namaqualand diamond reserves for decades. Discovered by diamond divers, these are supposedly some of the finest waves in a country known for an almost embarrassing wealth of world-class surf. Over the years, a trickle of surfers has made the pilgrimage – their whispered testimony slowly seeping into our collective surfing consciousness.
Namaqualand is a windswept semi-desert stretching up the Atlantic coast for more than1000 kilometres. Known for a fleeting wild-flower riot in spring, it is dirt poor and sparsely populated. Towns have disturbing names like Pofadder (puffadder). But under the shifting, sunburned sands and restless waves sleeps a dragon’s hoard like no other. The Namaqualand reserves are the richest source of alluvial diamonds on earth. Here be diamonds: ‘tears of the gods’ (ancient Greece); ‘splinters of fallen stars’ (ancient Rome). Forged in a flaming furnace billions of years ago and borne by blazing lava flows and relentless river action, diamonds tinkled towards the sea, resting at last in coastal sands and shallow reefs, patiently weathering the eons.
Diamond conglomerate De Beers has relentlessly mined this area and become one of the most successful cartels in modern commerce. Their skill? To invent a big-money myth that turned tiny crystals of carbon into glittering tokens of wealth, power and romance. The diamond as the standard symbol of marriage did not exist until De Beers came along in 1888. Within 70 years, the diamond engagement ring was de rigueur and the diamond was ‘forever’ (even though it could be shattered, discoloured or incinerated to ash). Fuelled by shrewd marketing to perpetuate the illusion of scarcity, and a monopolistic business ethic that took no prisoners, the diamond became the most sought-after precious stone on earth.
Now that they’ve all been collected from the beach, De Beers tentatively allows tourists to trample around their empty treasure chest. Limited permits are available if you pass stringent security checks. Not that there is much demand. Visitors are sparse: sporadic four-wheel drive nomads hitting the Namaqualand trail, occasional botanists fawning over rare flora and sometimes surfers seeking solitude and waves.
The surf is infuriatingly capricious. Prevailing cross-shore southerly winds blow for months, scouring the best swells. Looming coastal fog shadows the coast for weeks, leaching warmth from the land and driving the hardest miners to despair. The frigid sea is a breeding ground for great whites. Then there are the waves: great wind-blasted lumps that randomly strike the jagged reefs like cannon fire, tormenting the most deserving surfers, who gibber in anguish as they wait for better days.
But when warm land breezes blow from the desert – burning off the fog, caressing the sea and composing the swell – these waves become the choicest gifts from old Neptune’s sea chest. And there are no crowds – ever. Only one group of surfers gets access at a time. To get a permit you must know someone. Then you need a guide, a four-wheel drive with a winch, GPS coordinates and a secret handshake. Bizarrely, you must hire a diamond detective to trail you incognito (well that’s what we are told).
We are three Cape Town surfers. Lance, a professional surf photographer, is our reluctant, bearded guru. Having explored this strip over 10 years he has clocked up trips with legendary surf journalists and surfers. Without Lance’s insider knowledge, we would-be lost. Ray’s ‘a-friend-to-all-the-world’ from way back who has dreamed about this trip for years. Lovely people Ray and Lance: easygoing, indulgent, funny and lazy to a fault. Perfect companions really.
My naïve exploration here in 2000 was forgettable. The notorious fog warped spring into darkest winter. Visibility and temperature plummeted to the other side of nothing. Taking turns to clutch our gas cooker for warmth, one day bled into another until the dreaded westcoast flu took us, one by sorry one. In our hasty retreat, I wrecked my car’s suspension. It was a wretched limp back to Cape Town. Our boards didn’t even leave the safety of the car roof.
It is with trepidation that I return, chasing the dream of uncrowded waves with friends. Our plan is simple but sketchy: surf, take photographs, play boulles and master the one-egg omelette.
After a long day’s drive on hideously gutted dust roads, we arrive at a gulag-style border post with matching watchtower, barbed wire and armed guards. A sign bearing the De Beers logo ‘a diamond is forever’ is crowned by a crow, impervious to the icy gale that mercilessly subjugates the forlorn coastline. An apologetic winter sun briefly illuminates a bleak wasteland, then skulks behind a mountainous mine dump.
Driving slowly to our base camp, we see disturbing rows of flower-strewn crosses lining the dead-straight road – mementoes of fatal car crashes. In the falling light, we see springbok grazing. Later an ostrich breaks cover and flashes in front of us, narrowly avoiding collision.
We recover with a beer and watch the sunset over the Atlantic. Far away, rows of tiny white ribbons unfurl in the sea, offering a tempting glimpse of what we have come to find.
On the way in, our shelter had looked like a rogue military compound commissioned by Mad Max. The rough-hewn straggle of small cottages is open-plan clumps of asbestos, stone, rope and concrete. But there are endearing touches: a massive whale pelvis is a bench, a largest one fireplace warms the lounge, and mobiles (shells, glass and fragile bird bones) hang from the ceiling.
A massive generator powers the compound from 7pm to 10.30pm, even though we are the only guests. The water is undrinkable. It’s so hard it hurts to shower. Soap stubbornly refuses to lather. Come 10.30 pm and we are unprepared, scratching in the dark for candles. Lying in a wobbly old army bed, I hear the surf hammering the beach and the wind whistling through cracks in the thin walls, trying to remember lines to Arnold’s haunting poem about a beach – something about being true to your love, ignorant armies clashing at night, naked shingles and long melancholy roars. My iPod relieves me and I drift off to sleep to a BBC podcast about the impending water wars that will engulf our world soon. Apparently.
We wake to the wonderful sound loved by surfers – long-period surf breaking with metronomic regularity. But the dreaded fog has cloaked us in a veil of gloom. Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to see. The days are spent playing blind-man’s golf in the veldt until we lose our balls. By the third day, we are fighting amongst ourselves. We stand on the rocky shore, peering into the grey – but it’s hopeless. Brandy and Coco Pops for breakfast was a threshold we should never have strayed across. Time has collapsed. We must surf.
Finding the sea is a testy business. There are no signs or roads. Sandy rat tracks snake across the veld like spaghetti dropped from the colander of the gods. There are lots of gates. Matching rusted lock to rusted key is a puzzle Confucius would commend. There are no landmarks. There are no maps. We get lost. We get stuck. Hours later we are unstuck. We quickly get stuck again. A sandy trench ends at agate we have no key for. Massive heaps of mangled metal litter the path and dunes. Gigantic scars in the land are the dirty work of a dragline excavation that can fling 70 tons of earth with each immoral scoop.
A long list of rules has ironically told us to stay on the path lest we accidentally stand on an ancient fossil. The roaring sea taunts us. We are close yet so far – lost beggars on a beach of diamonds. We are at the source, the hidden haunt of diamonds, and the secret root of the Oppenheimer billions where Bizarre and Surreal hold hands and scream while Irony does a mad jig.
Humbled and shattered, lost in a maze, we finally find what we are looking for. A break in the clouds reveals a reeling right-point break and light-offshores – the perfect barrel.
The waves are powerful and unforgiving. Ray and Lance strangely decide to longboard, dropping gracefully into massive pits, reaping rewards and paying dues by turn. I’m riding a retro seven-two single-fin Shaun Tomson replica. It’s a work of art and, despite my concern, she takes me into the biggest barrel I have ever known – a frozen moment stripped to the bare: a glittering shard of time.
{mosimage}Paddling back to the line-up I get caught by a close-out set. I stupidly choose to swim for safety. I feel my leash snap. Suddenly my beautiful board is gone. In this heavy swell, I expect to find her shattered on the rocks. She hardly has a scratch. In the time it takes to paddle out again the fog is back, the winds have swung onshore and Ray and Lance are getting dressed. The shoreline is lost in the mist. The dark waves loom ominously as crows drift in and out of the fog. Not all surf trips are coconuts and dolphins.
Back on the beach, Lance has finally mastered his one-egg omelette (flour makes up the difference), which we enjoy with a cup of coffee. We laugh wryly at the many ironies crowded around us: that this traumatised stretch of forlorn coastline is the birthplace of possibly the most prestigious industry on the planet. That because of this, the area has remained hidden, and therefore we can enjoy surfing all on our own. That De Beers has the audacity to tell us to tread lightly when they have pulverised this place for over 70 years. But there you go. Everyone knows that life is complicated. Thank God you can’t build fences in the sea.
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