This morning, 11 August, 6:30, I walked to the shed in the kind of cold that bites through gloves. The old Japanese tractor waited like it always does. Three cylinders. No glow plugs. Crank, cough, splutter, then life. The grass was white with frost. The diesel had that slow gluck cluck that carries across a sleeping camp. Most people would curse that sound at this hour. Around here it means something is about to happen.
Down to the launch pad. The river lay under a thick lid of mist. Not smoke. Not fog. Something heavier that moves in sheets and hides the banks. Phillip and Melanie, a visiting guest from Namibia, were already waiting, faces set and quiet. We loaded Phillip’s custom-built Merida hardtail MTB. Ian climbed aboard with the drone. This scene needs air. Needs that wide shot of a boat cutting a pencil line through the Vaal.
Seven o’clock, we pushed off. The cold pinned our cheeks and fingers. Air at minus one. Water at 12.8. The motor worked in a steady rhythm. Sometimes the mist closed so hard I eased back to idle just to feel the channel and keep us off the banks. The world shrank to a few meters of grey and the sound of water under the hull.
Phillip sat beside me under a blanket and two jackets, calm as a monk, and barefoot in plakkies. I gave him a look. He grinned. Shoes freeze your feet, he said. Then they grind and scrape and make it worse. Barefoot is honest. That is Phillip. Simple logic. No fuss.
We spoke only what needed saying. Our noses ran and then stopped because the cold locked everything in place. The drone lifted now and then, ghosting into the haze and coming back with gold, green, and white. The sun began pushing through the tree line in a slow burn, first a faint coin, then a bright blade cutting the mist into bands. The river started throwing back color. Bronze. Silver. Then that clean morning blue you only see when the air hurts your lungs.
Birds moved in and out of the mist like quick sketches. Egyptian geese lifted off in pairs, calling sharp and low over the water. Cormorants skimmed close to the surface before vanishing into the grey. A fish eagle’s cry cut through the damp stillness, the sound hanging long after the bird itself was gone. Egrets stood like thin white posts along the banks, their reflections doubling the scene.
Every now and then I could feel the river open wide under us, then narrow again, the banks still hidden. That is why it felt earned. Forty-five kilometres of patience. Cold faces. Numb hands. A small team that knows when to keep quiet.
Fifty-five minutes. The mist thinned and the Vaalharts Weir rose out of it like a wall. We eased in, dropped anchor, and let the river settle around the hull. Hot coffee on the bank brought feeling back into our fingers with that sharp sting that says blood is moving again. Phillip checked his kit, pulled the blanket away, and stood up ready. He slung his bag, rolled the bike, swung a leg over, and looked at the line to Kimberley as if it had been waiting for him.
He pedalled off from the weir with that same quiet grin. No chest beating. No camera crew. Just a man who almost ran out of time and now refuses to waste any of it. For Riverbend, this was a first. A cyclist ferried from Christiana to Warrenton by boat, then rolling on toward Kimberley. The kind of thing you have to feel to understand. Cold like a slap. Beauty that sneaks up on you. A small crew, one river, and a morning none of us will forget.
Back at camp, the tractor will go to sleep again. The frost will lift. People will ask what the noise was at dawn. We will show them the photos of plakkies in minus one, the drone shots of a boat drawing a line through steam, and the moment the weir stepped out of the mist. They will get it.
Riverbend is where journeys pause to breathe, then move again.
Soul Rest, River Best.