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From the very ground of the old giant, a Karee (Searsia lancea) and a White Mulberry (Morus alba) took root, woven into the story of the river. Now, three trees stand together, one fading, two thriving, their roots tangled in history, their branches stretching toward the future.

The Willow may not speak much longer, but it leaves behind something stronger than words, shade, shelter, and the reminder that life always finds a way.

When the floodwaters rose, he stood firm. When the dry seasons cracked the earth, he drank deep. His roots stretched into the past, but his branches reached for the future. Though he has never left, he carries the heart of a nomad, growing where the wild takes him.

But even the strongest travelers must one day rest. Now, as his leaves thin and his branches grow weary, he makes way for the next generation. His spirit lingers in the rustling of the wind, the cool shade he still offers, and the roots he leaves behind.

So when you pass by, give a nod to Oom Veldvoet. His journey is almost done, but his story will live on.

He’s tough. He’s fast. He’s got no patience for hesitation. The river’s edge is no place for the weak, and Kaptein Kansvat came to prove that survival belongs to the bold.

Sharing roots with the Mulberry and the fading Willow, he is both the past and the future. He doesn’t ask for space, he takes it. And one day, when campers gather under his mighty shade, they’ll know the legend of the one who saw an opportunity… and took it.”

Born to weather storms and outgrow the rest, he stands with broad shoulders and an iron will, offering refuge to those who seek rest beneath his mighty canopy. His soldiers? The leaves, bigger than a man’s hand, rustling like marching boots when the wind calls them to attention.

Farmers may call him the Spanish Plane or English Oak or Plataan, but here, on this sacred river soil, he is the guardian of the shade, the protector of the weary, and the undisputed ruler of leafy ranks. No storm can shake him, no flood can claim him, and no camper escapes the comfort of his embrace.

Stand beneath Generaal Grootblaar, and know that you are in the presence of a legend. Salute him with a deep breath, for his roots run deep, and his stories run even deeper. “Battle Cry”: Stand strong! Rest in his shade, but never question his leaves!

His branches have been carefully guided, his leaves whisper stories of order and grace. He is not just another Karee, he is the camp’s gatekeeper of comfort, the shade of the people, the general public’s retreat from the sun. His duty? To provide a cool refuge for weary travelers, curious wanderers, and those who simply wish to sit beneath a tree that knows its place and stands its ground.

But don’t be fooled by his refined looks, he still carries the heart of a warrior, a Karee with deep roots and unyielding resilience. His story is still being written, his branches still stretching toward greatness. But make no mistake, his presence is already known.

One day, when he towers over the camp, campers will point and say: ‘That’s no ordinary Karee, that’s Kommandant Kampkaree, the tree that grew with purpose!’” (A true camp Karee – shaped by hands, grown by character.)

Salute the Kommandant!

The river was a thief in the night. It didn’t rise, it invaded. It shattered walls, swallowed lawns, and dragged Riverbend into a thick, sucking silence. Nothing left but mud and wreckage. For weeks the frogs owned the ruins, croaking from stagnant pools where families once laughed,  a drunk, mocking choir that never knew when to shut up.

Tonight I stand on a paved base fit for a Pablo. Not just stone and cement, but a slab that feels like it could anchor a kingpin’s throne. You can almost see him: fat cigar smoldering in one fist, brandy sweating in the other, a urinal carved into the corner for his exclusive use. Because why walk when the world should bend? That’s the base we poured. Overbuilt. Cocky. A concrete dare for the water to try us again.

But the river still talks. Listen. Soft waves slap a hypnotic beat against the stone. Frogs warm up in the reeds. And then it comes….  The bloody pesky vuvuzelas! Their messy, spine-ripping scream tears down from the blackness and makes you glare at the blue gums across the water, half-dreaming of a bazooka to blast them into feathery oblivion. That’s the soundtrack now. Water lapping. Frogs mocking. pesky vuvuzelas mocking. Chaos still here, but order rebuilt on top of it.

Now look up. The sky above this camp hasn’t shifted since the first pyramid stone was dragged across the desert. The Egyptians weren’t dabbling in fairy tales. They read Sirius, the dog star, to predict the Nile’s deadly gift. They aligned monuments to Orion’s belt with a precision that still steals our breath. A flood meant death if you were blind, survival if you saw. Whole dynasties rose and fell on whether a priest read the heavens right.

And me? Born 25 April 1968, Upington. A Thursday morning, the heat already clawing past thirty-eight. Farm bakkies rattling down dust roads, dominees sharpening their Sunday sermons, vineyards clawing out of the sand with irrigation canals hacked by hand. Somewhere between barking dogs and the rush of sluice gates, I cried for the first time. Taurus Sun. Scorpio rising. Stubborn as stone.

I know hydrology. I’ve studied this river’s moods, its deceit, its sudden brute violence. But I’ll admit it: the priests of the Nile would have beaten me. They lived by the sky, not by gauges. Laugh at horoscopes all you want, but you can’t spit away five thousand years of men who survived by stitching heaven and river together with naked eyes and sheer will.

So what’s the zodiac of Riverbend? Born once in ’68 with me, under Taurus. Reborn when the first pole was driven back into the mud: 28 May 2025. That’s Gemini. The twins. The second life. The sign that simply refuses to die. Try and find me a more fitting omen.

Astrology has skeletons in its cupboard. It was survival science first. Then came the fortune tellers, the carnival clowns, the magazine columns peddling lucky numbers and new lovers. That circus smeared it into a pot snot. But dig down and the bones are still there, solid: cycles, floods, droughts, chaos and order. Pattern recognition isn’t magic. It’s the oldest survival tool we have.

So stand here with me. The river at your feet. The sky, heavy and ancient, pressing down. Listen to the frogs, the slap of water, the hadidas screeching like devils in the gums. Keep your eyes on the sky. Now let the night peel back. The stars shift, the air thickens, and the river beneath your feet is no longer the Vaal. It is July 17, 2500 BC. You are on the Nile. Priests in white linen stand on the bank, eyes locked on Orion, waiting for Sirius to pierce the horizon.… Crocodiles drift in the reeds, still as logs. Then the roar. A hippo explodes from the shallows, jaws wide enough to snap a man in two. Boats surge. Spears flash. Arrows cut the air. Men scream as the water blooms red. The beast bellows, thrashes, then collapses. Silence falls, broken only by the current. The carcass is dragged ashore in triumph. This wasn’t hunting. This was ritual. Order clawed directly from the jaws of chaos.That was their river. This is ours. The Nile and the Vaal are cut from the same primordial cloth. Water gives. Water takes. Chaos is certain. Renewal follows if you endure. The ancients answered with pyramids that still cast shadows across the sand. We answer with paved platforms, rebuilt camps, and foundations poured deep into the flood-scoured earth.

Riverbend stands again. Not as a copy of what was lost, but as an answer to what the flood demanded. Born once under Taurus, stubborn and immovable. Reborn under Gemini, the sign of second lives, quick to adapt, built for survival.

Look up. The same sky that watched the pyramids rise, the same stars that marked the Nile’s rise, now watches the Vaal. The ancients would have nodded. They knew. Chaos is never the end. It is only the brutal, necessary beginning of something stronger.

Come visit Riverbend. Stand on our new platform, feel the weight of the stars, and hear the river’s story for yourself. Book your stay today and be part of our rebirth.

Some guests leave footprints. Ralf left fire. A man who stared death in the face, yet filled our boat with laughter, stories, and one last unforgettable sunset on the Vaal.

And so Riverbend has this amazing ability to house the most interesting people. Each guest who passes through leaves more than footprints on the riverbank. They leave a piece of their story. I have always found it fascinating to hear what battles people fight behind the surface smiles, and Ralf’s (from Germany) visit was one of those stories that stays with you long after the fire has gone out.

Ralf did not arrive at Riverbend as a tourist. He came as a man who had already stared death in the eye and decided he would not bow out quietly. Multiple myeloma had stripped his body, cracked his bones, and robbed him of the strength he once carried with ease. His wife’s passing had pushed him into the shadows, and for a time he sank there, bitter and broken. But then he pulled himself up and said, enough, if time is short I am going to drive it flat-out. That was the Ralf who turned up here at Riverbend.

From the moment he stepped onto the boat one afternoon for a sundowner ride, Ralf was alive with energy. He did not sit back in silence. He bubbled. One moment it was about his daughters, the next about his dog, then it was old hunting safaris and campfire memories, each story rolling out of him with the excitement of a man who had decided that talking and laughing were weapons against the dark. You could not help but get caught in his current.

I kept the boat steady, gliding into the sunset without a bump, because Ralf’s body could no longer take jolts. The air was crisp, sharp with winter, and each breath felt like glass in your lungs. We poured Old Brown Sherry, the sweet burn of it rising into the cold. Then Ralf lit a cigarette. The smoke should have soured the moment, but it didn’t. It curled into the breeze soft and slow, mixing with the sherry and the river mist until soon the atmosphere was heavy with a sweet essence of its own, as if the night itself had joined in his defiance.

The sun dropped lower, bleeding fire across the Vaal, and Ralf sat there with his glass in hand, telling stories, laughing, keeping the afternoon alive. His energy was contagious. You forgot he was sick. You forgot the cancer eating at him. He refused to let it dominate the ride. He had already decided he would not go out as a victim but as a man who made the most of every second left to him.

It was more than a boat ride. It was Ralf grabbing hold of his last chapters and writing them out loud, sentence by sentence, in front of us. Saying goodbye the next day was hard because I knew deep down we might never see him again.

When the boat touched back at the jetty, there was a moment I will never forget. Ralf climbed off slow, glass still in his hand, and he turned to thank us with that grin of his, that unstoppable grin that made the whole world smaller and lighter. And in that moment the truth hit me hard. This was probably the last time I would see Ralf.

And so Ralf remains on our minds. Not as a man beaten down, but as the fire that burned through one last sunset and left the rest of us standing braver.

This is Riverbend. A place where stories like Ralf’s do not fade, they live on in the water, the firelight, and the people who pass through.

And maybe that is why, when I stare into the fire at night, searching for the purpose of another day passed, I cannot imagine anywhere else on earth giving more meaning to my existence than this mighty Vaal.

Hit the booking button now for your own personal experience with our tree sentinels. They keep their secrets 😉

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.

Overnight sorted. Gate to pillow in minutes. Safe parking, short grass, hot showers, quiet nights. In at dusk, out at dawn.

Holiday makers, stay a while. Riverside lawns, boat launch, fishing, braai, boat cruises, river activities, clean ablutions, kids run free. Weekly and monthly rates available.

WhatsApp +27 82 870 5711 to check dates. Riverbend Camp, Christiana.

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So many people keep asking: “Why Christiana? Out of all damn places. You had Namibia. You had the dunes, the coast, the freedom.” And every time, I smile the same dry smile because don’t you get it? Thought of me stealing the drum?

Truth is, I didn’t steal a thing. I picked it up. Carefully. Quietly. Like a man picking up the old man’s tools after a long day of work, knowing well he’s got no choice but to carry on. This drum didn’t come easy, and it damn sure wasn’t taken without weight. It was handed over by time, by legacy, by blood. And I knew exactly where I needed to take it.

Christiana isn’t just a name on a map to me. It’s where the rhythm of the old man still echoes. That faint Vaal River ripple. His half-grin over a tumbler of whiskey while floating in life jackets in the Vaal River. The stories told without saying a word. The small things… those are what shape a man. Not the headlines, not the glory. But the calm voice that tells you when to row, and when to drift.

I came here to beat that drum not for show, not for applause but to keep a rhythm going that mattered to one man who mattered to me. And if you don’t understand that, maybe you never listened close enough to your own old man’s heartbeat.

No, I don’t trust people easily. I’ve seen the flaws, the betrayals, the thieves with their shiny smiles and empty souls. I know what a stolen drum sounds like…

It’s off.

Always off. Doesn’t matter how hard you hit it, how long you hit it. The beat’s broken before the first sound hammers through the air.

But this? This is different. This is sacred ground. Not because it’s perfect but because it was his. Soul, sweat all over the place. And because when I beat this drum here, in this dusty little place forgotten by most, the beat finally fits. It belongs.

Riverbend is that place where this drum has been beating for the last quarter century. And I’ll keep beating it, humbly, with a plain, simple life.

This Vaal River is no tame stallion. Sitting next to it demands respect. It took away, in the blink of an eye, so much that was written here in bricks and mortar, and it all needs to be rebuilt. How could I not enjoy that challenge? That alone is worth spending my years of experience and my curious nature on. But it has to be next to THIS river, the main vein running 1200 km through the southern Africa continent. If it’s not here, I might as well sit in Hermanus, or Swakopmund, or wherever. But as long as I’m granted this piece of land, I’ll learn how to coexist with this mighty, living, life-giving, calm, resilient, raging monster and enjoy every part of it while being entertained.

So no, I’m not here to prove anything. I’m not here to perform. I’m here to protect something. And maybe, just maybe, to pass that rhythm on to the next in line when it’s time. It’s called… The cronicals of Riverbend. Where camp fires burn out, and stories remain.

Look at this. Freshly baked bread, still steaming out the oven. Baked by the daughter I call my wife just like it used to be during those rare, high moments when I visited this meaningful piece of earth. Real bread. Real farm butter. Apricot jam. And a strong cup of coffee.

Is it possible for life to get any better?

No. Absolutely can’t be.

And later me and Leia, cruising into a sunset that doesn’t beg for filters. Just silence, peace, and Panache cutting through the Vaal. Yes, Panache the boat. The campsite too. Named for its meaning: “flamboyant confidence of style or manner.”

That’s not marketing. That’s life.