The Global Paddling Community

Review of the book "Run the rivers of Southern Africa" by Celliers Kruger. If you are planning a river trip in Africa, this is a "must buy" book.

Introduction

Back in May I received a copy of Celliers' book. I was quite surprised by the format: A4, hard cover, full with colour pictures... It surely does not look like a cheap book !!!

The first 20 pages consist of an introduction that regular paddlers could find a bit lengthy. The author describes canoeing, the types of boats, safety aspects, equipment, river grades, and also the history of paddling in southern Africa. Celliers later told me that the reason for these first 20 pages was that the book was more than a simple topo guide: he hopes to bring more people to canoeing and wanted to compile an introductory book with a precise topo guide of southern Africa rivers. I have to admit that he did it quite well. [ and it is also interesting to see the way some south-african paddle. For instance look at this example (20 kb). ]

The rivers

The rivers are sorted by drainage. I counted a total of 64 rivers for South Africa / Swaziland / Lesotho and 4 in other african countries (Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Namibia). There are obviously more rivers in the region and some of them have been paddled. These rivers are often mentioned in the book but not precisely described as they have not been paddled enough to have a precise description.

The description of each river follow a simple but efficient pattern as illustrated on the right: a general map to locate put-in, get-out and difficult rapids, a text description of the river, a picture to get a feeling of the river and also a fact sheet which summarizes river grade, length, duration, type of river, put-in, get-out, dam released or not, access (permit or not) and the commercial operators. There is also the ideal type of craft: the book is also aimed at rafters and recreational paddlers.

The writing style is good. I was impressed by the quality of the maps. I often find the maps to be the weakest part of paddling topoguides, mostly because on black and white maps, it is really hard to distinguish between rivers, tributaries, roads etc ... Well, the maps (example, 17kb - the same, 159kb) are well designed in this book, with the minimum information necessary (road numbers, name of villages, scale) and especially they are in color which makes the reading much easier. The information looks precise and rather complete although I haven't been there to check it out ... but I will sometime ! The pictures are great and really invite the reader to travel there. I have to admit that I am not a big fan of brown water and the chocolate color of some rivers surprised me a lot. See here (13 kb) what I mean !

Conclusion

This is certainly a good book, well though out, designed and packed with information and great color pictures. Because there is not much litterature available on this part of the world this becomes a must buy for anybody planning a trip over there anyway. There are only 2 points that I think could make this book better. The maps are great but the book is missing an overall map, showing the different drainages and their locations within the region. More importantly, I found it sometime hard to understand when the paddling season was for this or that river. The introductory paragraphs at the beginning of each drainage description often contains some information about water levels and rainy seasons, but I think that the author could have made it clearer in places. To convince you of the quality of the book, have a look at these high quality pictures:

• cover (515 kb)
• page 27 (362 kb)
• page 40 (281 kb)
• page 75 (159 kb)
• page 85 (383 kb)
• page 86 (240 kb)

Availability

Title: Run the rivers of southern africa
Author: Celliers Kruger
ISBN: 0-620-28157-X
Distributors:

• International: Exclusivebooks.com
• UK: Cordee
• Germany: Kanubuch.de

For more information, please visit : www.fluiddesigns.co.za

Apologies

I would like to apologize to Celliers Kruger, author of the book for the time it took me to review it. Celliers contacted me back in May, send me a copy within a week and it took me more than 3 months to write the review ...