On a trip to a soaked Richtersveld, the experienced and usually level-headed Francois Smit learned – the difficult way – not to play with a flash flood. Here’s how it happened.

Trapped behind the wheel of your 4x4 in a flash flood, waist deep in a freezing, muddy and rapidly rising Richtersveld river, is as good a time as any to panic.

Too shocked to think, I’m desperately trying to keep the engine running while a submerged rescue team are frantically trying to locate the recovery points, hidden deep below the fast flowing water.

As a seasoned off-road traveller − usually very responsible and sometimes overly cautious − attempting this crossing was well out of character. But here I am … what was I thinking?

During a recent river crossing in the Karoo, I sat for two hours waiting for the water level to drop, but not today …