Toast Coetzer asks: What’s better than Betta?

Betta is a tiny speck on a back road that runs along the side of the Namib Desert. Toast Coetzer looked up from his slice of carrot cake for just a moment.

Did you know you can calm a gemsbok by pouring a little brandy on its back? Ja no, me neither. But this is the kind of thing you can learn over a cup of coffee in Betta while sitting in a camping chair around last night’s ashes, where enormous steaks were braaied for the group from Upington on their way to Meob Bay for a fishing trip.

These men are currently having breakfast in the dining area under the watchful glass eye of a taxidermied leopard and two of the biggest kudu bulls I’ve seen in a long time. A pack of dogs – some short and stout, others long-legged sprinters – mill around on the cement floor inside, or on the sand outside.