The Skeleton Coast is a stretch of desert in the North of Namibia that for more than 300 kilometers isn’t crossed by any road. Those who wish to pass it use dried riverbeds instead. When I was 14, my dad and I followed the dried bed of the Hoanib river for a few days while traveling through the Skeleton Coast, and adventure I’ve previously mentioned here.
One night, we camped below a cliff. Where we pitched our tent in the sand, we could see the prints of the elephants and giraffes that had recently visited. For dinner we had braai: barbecued meat, prepared in the local way on flat rocks over the open fire.
During the night, I woke up because I heard something in front of the tent. Thinking of the elephants and giraffes, I unzipped the tent and peeked out. The shoes we had left outside were gone. Looking around, I saw one of them a few feet away. While I was still trying to figure out what was going on, a fox-sized animal appeared out of the dark, took the remaining shoe between its teeth, and disappeared.
The tracks the next morning pointed to the culprit being a jackal. We followed them to a nearby shrub, where I was able to recover one of my cloth shoes. My dad’s leather shoes were gone for good, probably serving as a chewing toy for the jackal’s pups. Until we reached the closest shoe store a few hundred kilometers further South, we had to wear flimsy sandals that we had brought along as camp shoes.
Ever since, I’ve been conscious of how irreplaceable shoes are when out in the wild. On multi-day backpacking trips, my shoes are one of the few items that are essential. I would be okay without a tent and without food for a few days, but I’d really rather not hike without shoes.
Nehaveigur 