More Otter Trail

Also: hiking poles. I'd have been lost without them. They prevented at least half a dozen falls onto sharp rocks that could've had grave results. They also made hiking with a pack much much easier.

Other than the hospitality shown us by our Afrikaans cabinmates, the first three days were pretty unremarkable. The walks were not stunningly difficult, though the views were stunning. The scenery was dramatic and the pounding of the waves against the rocks was a constant source of awe. The weather varied from sun to wind and rain. We hiked some in the rain, some in the dark, mostly in the forest. The centerpiece of the Otter Trail is the Bloukrans River crossing on Day Four, so I'm just going to skip to that.

So, after rising at 3:30 on the fourth day with the intent of making it to the mouth of the Bloukrans River in advance of low tide, Meghan and I got out at 4:20 and hiked in the dark for a couple of hours, kept company by a full moon that set as the sun started to lighten the eastern sky. The full moon meant that we were to cross the river at a spring low tide. This was always a very good thing in our planning of the trail, as the Bloukrans is wide and we'd heard that people who'd crossed at a neap low tide--when the difference between high and low is at its nadir--had sometimes had to swim the river. We are both strong swimmers and were prepared for this eventuality if something went wrong and we didn't make it by low tide, though we didn't relish the prospect as our previous river crossings had familiarized us with just how numbingly cold the water in Tsitsikamma Park is. (Tsitsikamma means "place of much water"... We were about to figure out that sometimes it'dd too much water.)

The hike in the morning was really challenging for the first six kilometers or so, with lots of rock scrambling and a couple of slogs through the aforementioned thigh-deep sea scum. I use the word scum rather than foam simply to indicate its disgustingness. It smelled powerfully of seaweed, or rather the sea. Whatever taste it is that makes oysters appealling (if they appeal to you), multiply that by ten. Not off-smelling, but not pleasant. My hiking boots still smell like the catch of the day... yesterday. I cannot, however impugn the experience too much, as I was wearing shorts and the sensation of cool foam against my legs was actually rather delicious. I'm thinking of waterproofing our apartment when we get back and renting a foam machine.

We made it to the overlook above the Bloukrans just minutes after the official low tide of 9:36am. Our Afrikaans hosts, one of whom had injured himself, had arrived twenty minutes earlier and looked grim about the prospect of crossing. The river mouth is daunting. A hundred yards wide, and you have to cross it at an angle to reach a slipway between two swaths of jagged rocks, or go directly across and then scramble along the rocks to where the slipway joins the trail. The waves out at sea were measuring 20 feet or more on their faces. They came rolling up the river mouth carrying lots of debris and driftwood, including some pieces bobbing around that were thicker than telephone poles and about ten to fifteen feet long. The river itself was pretty sedate and pretty low, given the rain we'd had. It was simply a matter of the surges that rolled up the river every fifteen seconds or so.

Meghan was undaunted. She'd made up her mind. We were going to try. Our fellow hikers asked us incredulously if we were going to cross. I said repeatedly that we were going to try. We got down to the rocky shore and proceeded to get all our stuff into the thick plastic survival bags we'd bought just for this purpose. The others looked worried, tried to talk us out of it. I started to take their side. It looked dangerous and was getting more dangerous by the minute. This was not the time to hurry. It was time to make a considered decision. Meghan was adamant. We'd hiked four days to get to this damn river and we were going to cross it. In the end, it was Piet who urged us to cross halfway without our packs, just to assess the conditions, then come back for the packs. We made it five feet. A couple of ice-cold waves smacked us near the shore and we immediately burst out laughing. It was insane to even think about, but we needed the shock of water to bring us to our senses. I'm glad it was the first five feet that convinced us that crossing was dangerous, rather than five feet in the middle, or a five-foot log carried by a five-foot wave. We were never going to cross that river. I'm very glad, though, to have tried. We, at least, had put our feet in the water.

The other group of hikers who came along shortly after our foray took one look at the river mouth and immediately went for the escape route. Meghan and I changed out of our wet, cold clothes and followed the other hikers. Tsitsikamma has 12 (or in this case 13) hikers leaving every day, including Christmas, on the Otter Trail and they've really got their act together as far as the escape routes go. The escape route itself was brutal. Eight hundred meters at about a forty-five degree angle. At that point, we decided we'd had enough. The rest of the hikers got picked up by a ranger and brought to a trailhead directly above the next hut. There was one more day's hiking. They wanted to finish the trail, but for us, the spell had been broken. Getting a lift from one place to another was cheating. Nature had won. We weren't in the mood to ask for a rematch. We decided instead to go back to Storms River Mouth at the start of the trail, where they have lovely chalets overlooking the ocean. We checked into one of the "honeymoon" chalets, which had a living room and kitchen, but we were mostly interested in the hot shower and clean sheets. We had an early dinner. (The concept of a restaurant was at that point stunning to me... A place where you tell them what you want and they just bring it to you? Genius!) And we hit those clean white sheets with no regrets, waking up twelve hours later to a beautiful day and a full breakfast.

Rich's Impressions from the Otter Trail

First: ouch. Before setting out, if anyone had told me that I'd have a hard time hiking 26 miles in five days, I would've scoffed at the idea. Pack or no pack, I figured I'd be fresh as a daisy every morning except the last, which would come after a ten mile hike and a river crossing. But the Otter is not very playful. We didn't have time or energy to sit around watching birds or otters or any of the hundred or so dolphins. This was hard hiking. I've hiked 15 miles a day for three days in a row in Patagonia. I've gone to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back in a day. The Otter Trail is not to be scoffed at.

Second: if it's going to be even a little bit chilly, it's hard to overpack on instant coffee/tea/soup. We budgeted our food weight pretty tightly, but there were many times I wanted a cup of something warm and a nice little break, but couldn't do so without robbing myself a few days hence of the same pleasure. Next time, plenty of this kind of stuff.

Third: Bring one book. I brought four, including my South African bird book. The rain we had on the trail made that and my binoculars pretty useless. I really thought I'd have a lot more time to read, but quickly found that backpacking offers a mix of strenuous exercise, lots of sleep, and huge amounts of futzing (a.k.a faffing). Add to those the fact that there's tremendous natural beauty about and you really need to be disciplined to get an hour's reading in. This dictum extends to traveling in general. I brought a half-dozen books on this trip and have been lugging them all around. I should've brought two, max.

Fourth: Tides. The Otter Trail is principally ( at the time we did it at least) a race against the tide. River crossing at the coast is very dependent on the tides. Over the first few days, we rushed a few times to make it to a river crossing at low tide only to get there and be greeted with a knee-deep river and some gentle surges coming up the river from the crashing waves a couple hundred yards away. At that point, it's easy to wonder why you got up early and busted your hump to get there when it was obviously an easy crossing. Several times, though, the group that came after us had a difficult crossing only an hour later. Meghan and I stopped on the far shore a couple of times and watched an easy crossing turn into a daunting one within the space of forty minutes or so. This made timing pretty important, which brings me to my two last points.

Fifth: If you're planning on doing the Otter Trail, the estimated hiking times are very low, bordering on irresponsibly so. Leave plenty of extra time for steep ascents, rock scrambling, unforeseen obstacles (such as thigh-deep sea-scum), and such niceties as eating and drinking. It took us five hours on the last day to get to the Bloukrans river mouth, the most significant crossing. This had been estimated at four hours, and the whole day's hike at six hours.

Sixth: Faffing. On the last day, we rose at 3:30am and were out the door by 4:20, but only got to the river at about 9:45, right around low tide. Every day, we left about a half hour after we'd intended, and our companions, who were five people, took up to an hour of faffing to get ready. I'm convinced that the bigger a group is, the harder it is to get it going, and that's because there's a bunch of permission-to-faff being passed from person to person. You look over and say to yourself, "Jim's not even got his shoes on yet, so I have time to repack my pack so the snacks are on top." Then Jim gets his shoes on, looks over at you and says to himself, "Rich isn't even packed yet, so I have time to..." The more people, the more this gets passed around and the harder it is to get going. I thought again and again of getting an army up and going in the morning. There's a reason for that strict discipline. Without it, half the day would be taken up in getting ready for it.

Phew. I was going to tell some stories from the actual crossing, but I'm beat! I'll just echo Meghan's sentiments that our South African cabin-mates really showed the best of their country and culture. A nicer group of people, you'll never meet.

The Otter Trail

The Otter Trail, as it was pitched to me, would be a 42 kilometre backpacking trip along the rocky, pristine coast of the Eastern Cape Province. A 4 day, 5 night affair, it would entail walking between 2 and 7 hours a day, and bunking in enclosed bunk houses with running water, bathrooms and mattresses provided. Hmm. Sounds easy. Later, I was warned that the trail was strenuous, but questioned how hiking less than 10 kilometres per day could be strenuous, and continued planning the trip.

We arrived in Knyzne, to a friend Gertie’s seaside home, a day early to prep for the trip. My daydream of leisurely watching otters play in the surf was abruptly burst when Rich called up a weather forecast. Five days of rain, with wind up to 50mph, high of 60 degrees. We thought of walking along unsheltered rocky coastline and cancelled the trip immediately. Then Gertie pointed out that while the forecast was grim, the local forecast as not often correct, and that we could start the trip, and bail at any point if we were miserable. Fair enough. After all, we’d been planning this trip for quite a while. In fact, most people wait 2 years on a list before they are given a slot on the Otter Trail. There are only 2 cabins at every over night sight. Each holds 6 people.

With our waterproof gear on, and our packs full of dry clothes and dried food, we set off from Storms River mouth. On our first day we picked our way for 3 hours along slippery rocks. At one point, we spotted an otter diving amongst the swirls(a rare sighting), and later hopped over a stream and looked up to find a 100 foot waterfall. Breathtaking. We also ran into the 6 people, from Cape Town, who were to reside along side us every night. We wondered how this would work because we were told there were 5 people ahead of us. When we arrived, there were 5 Afrikaners, from Port Elizabeth, in the other cabin. We told both parties of the issue, there must have been a booking error. The Afrikaners stepped up, they said “you’re welcome in our cabin. There’s plenty of room. Two of us will bunk together. You can each have your own bed.” We were floored. We accepted the offer and said that we’d bunk together in a single bed the following night.

For me, the impressions from trek were three fold. It was Rich’s first backpacking trip, and our first trip together. If you were to watch us together you’d have never guessed that he was green, and I seasoned. He was a natural, especially in our camp kitchen(as usual, I did the dishes). The second impression the trip left on me was the awesome power of nature. Because of the fierce weather, we spent our days watching massive surf crashing all day, and then camped just feet from the shore, listening to the heavy surf through the night. I was lulled into a state of fear. The third impression was of the generous, solid, Afrikaners who took us into their circle of friends, offered us their bed, whisky, steak and a seat by their braai. At the outset of the trip, if someone had asked me whether I’d choose to spend 4 nights in close quarters with English speaking athletes/professionals, or Afrikaans family-oriented first time backpackers. I’d hands-down have chosen the English group, thinking that we’d have more in common. But in the end, the Afrikaners chose us, and we were grateful.

The late bird special

The staff at every lodge in Namibia has been impressive. They try so hard to please, swooping in with white gloved hands to remove a plate the moment you're finished a meal, and responding to every "thank you" with a drawn-out "pleasuuuure" and a smile. As tourism is Namibia's leading industry, jobs in hospitality seem coveted, and the largely African staff are well trained. But there's such a difference between colonial/European culture and the many many native cultures that the subtleties get lost in translation. Recently, we arrived at a lodge early and asked for a light lunch. We were escorted into an empty restaurant with open windows looking onto spectacular rock formations and watering holes for the wildlife. When we were pointed towards our table for two, I gasped when I saw a dead bird on the floor next to our table. The waitress looked at me, sighed and said "its dead." And so the standoff began. We were not permitted to sit at any other empty table in the restaurant because they were not "tables for two" and no one present was willing to deal with the dead bird. The waitress said to me "please, Ma'am, you sit now, we move bird later." I guess she hadn't yet been trained for what to do in the case of a dead bird in the restaurant. And, I can't pinpoint the guideline that prevented me from eating in the presence of death, but I knew it was not kosher. So, we picked up our plates and moved to the deck to enjoy the meal and observe some wildlife.

Namibia Summary

It was after a long day's travel that we arrived at the Windhoek airport in our small 42-seater jet. The airport is, inexplicably, forty miles from downtown Windhoek, stuck in the middle of the desert. So, we had no view of Windhoek from above, indeed, no view of anything on the ground. We descended and descended through the darkness and suddenly the runway was there and we were on it. At passport control, we found a stack of photocopies of a letter from the Italian ambassador to Namibia to arriving Italian citizens. The entire subject was driving. We'd been told and had read that Namibia has the most dangerous roads in the world, but were absolutely in the dark as to why. Coming from South Africa, in which the danger is coming from other (desperate) people, we were a bit trepidatious about the danger that awaited us here. I did my best to translate a foreign letter after the 40 minute ride to our hotel. Our driver had met us with "welcome to our peaceful country" so we started to let our guard down a little. The letter pretty much said that since the roads, even the gravel ones, are in such good condition, the temptation is to speed. The danger apparently comes from this, and for people driving at night from the animals, domestic and wild, which cross and loiter on the roads.

Nevertheless, all this threw a scare into me and as we went to bed, we resolved that rather than the Toyota Corrolla we'd reserved, we'd try to rent something safer, like the Mercedes we got in Kruger. At the rental agency the next morning, I broached the subject with the sun-weathered but pretty rental agent. Came the reply, which was to be repeated many times between Meghan and I: "Sir, this iss Namibia. We do not have luxury vehicles for rental." Put back in our middle-class shoes, we were shown to our white Toyota Corrolla, which was black inside and was absolutely spotless and in very good condition. We soon figured out that almost every car in this desert country is white or beige because of the strong sun.

We pulled out and headed south, hitting smooth dirt roads about an hour out of Windhoek. Here's a list of the highlights for the next 10 days:

From our two nights in Sossusvlei, in the south:

Climbing "Big Daddy", the red dune that rises above Dead Vlei (Dead Lake) in the Namib Desert dunes. And especially, running down the same, to walk barefoot across the absolutely white dead lake bed, the clay dried into tortoise-shell patterns, a stand of long-dead trees sticking out of the lake at one end.

Taking a ride in the desert with Sam, the Yorkshire-born guide from the Desert Homestead where we stayed. In the States, you only get to walk, sometimes get a bumpy trot, and a stern warning from the guide. Here, we got to canter for five minutes at a time, which was awesome... and actually feels like you're riding a horse, rather than being carried by it.

Stargazing on a perfectly still, perfectly cool desert night, with a new moon on the other side of the planet and the Milky Way so distinct it was like a band of clouds.

From two nights in Swakopmund:
The sunset over the crashing waves was awesome, but we were really too tired to take advantage of much in or around the town. Mostly, we tried and failed repeatedly to get on the Internet.

A night in Erongo Wilderness Lodge:
The whole thing. Sleeping in a tent under a thatched roof. Watching the sun set and rise from the top of one of the granite monoliths that surround the camp.

Also, the late-bird special, which is to be described in another posting.

Doro Nawas, in Damaraland:
An otherworldly sunset, watched from the very comfortable bed in our canvas-walled, thatch-roofed bungalo. One whole wall was glass doors, which opened up onto a polished concrete verandah, and then onto the desert as far as you can see. The squawking calls of the red-billed francolins, and the hollow clacking of some other bird.

Trailing a group of eight desert-adapted elephants down the dry Huab river bed.

Etosha:
A white, dry and different place. We saw lion and elephant, which are the things to see, but were more impressed with the small things we saw there (yellow mongoose), and with the combinations of animals all coming to the watering holes to drink, than with any particular wildlife sighting.

Except maybe the just-calved, still-wet oryx being cleaned by its long-antlered mother, surrounded by four jackals eyeing the baby hungrily. We learned later that these very bad dogs were not in fact after the baby (though I'm sure they wouldn't have turned it down), but were waiting around for the pair to clear out so they could have the placenta, apparently a major source of protein for them.

Mount Etjo Safari Lodge:
A nightly lion feeding, where we watched two maned males, four females and five cubs all going at some meaty bones and pre-killed warthog that had been chained there. This all happened from the safety of a bunker shaped like a small quonset hut with a four-inch high slot running the length of it. The slot had a grating over it so we were completely safe, but the lion knew we were there, and even a glance from an amber-eyed baby was enough to turn your guts to jelly. The feeding was gruesome and awesome, with the huge male keeping everyone in line and every so often bellowing out a series of roars to announce the kill as his. The best part, though, was at the end, where this male caught sight through the grid of the two chatty Italian girls down the bench from us. He got up and very deliberately pointed his hindquarters at them and sprayed. It wasn't stinky or wet or anything, just a territory marking and a warning, but it was friggin' hilarious.

A rolicking, but ultimately unsuccessful, private game drive through the bush, looking for black (or even white) rhino.

On returning the car to the rental agency in Windhoek, miraculously undamaged after two thousand miles on roads of varying quality, I apologized for the state of it. I'd filled it up and had the windows cleaned, but didn't know if the dust that had collected in every crevice was my responsibility. The reply came, bookending the trip perfectly: "Sir, this is Namibia. We are accustomed to dust."


We now head off this morning for four nights and five days on the Otter Trail. High winds are predicted for the middle day (up to 50 mph), so we have no idea how successful our jaunt is going to be. We're bringing extra whisky to make sure everything turns out okay.