pak 'n toon

we reach the 8km marker. and take some photos. it's a challenge since my hands have become useless and white with cold. and slightly swollen.

having long nails is not a good idea on a 5 day hike.

my cousin chris and i had been walking for about 2 hours in the pouring rain, and wind, before the clay 8km sign. we thought we were only halfway, but thankfully the first day on the whale trail is only 15km, and not 18km as we expected.

we had started off in potberg at around 9am, after a briefing by the whale trail manager, lamla, who told us all the basics. she said the first day would take about 8 hours.

in the sunshine yes, and when you have time to appreciate the apparently awesome views, which we couldn't. but what i could appreciate was the the amazing variety of fynbos forest around me. massive king proteas, white proteas and pink disa plants.

(the nature course i completed recently has definitely made me more aware of the uniqueness of the cape mountain floral kingdom mkay)

chris is a landscape architect, so he was helpful in pointing out plants. he was also helpful in keeping me motivated in the persistent downpour. with only a handful of snack breaks, and trail mix (which ended up all over my face since i did not have full control of my fingers), we ended up at the first overnight hut, after only 4.5 hours.

fireplace, change of clothes, foil pouch tuna on a wrap. bliss. unfortunately my other cousin, debz, and her fiance kyle, had had to turn back, but soon enough we saw them roll in after the porters had dropped off our big black boxes.

for the record, paying extra for porterage on the whale trail is absolutely worth it. 15km in the rain with a full backpack = unimaginable.

after warming up, we built a fire and ate. and ate more. the indoor braai also doubled up as a shoe dryer, even though chris' new hi-tec soles shrank to about half the size. he spent the rest of the weekend packing pick 'n pay packets into his shoes.

onto day 2. better weather and a solid group effort to stay together. to make up for lost time debz and kyle headed off first. the rest of the crew, robyn, sean, debbie, ingrid, chris, evan, lee, liz, stuart and myself managed to keep together for a while. until i decided to go macro with my camera on the fynbos, and ended up doing the rest of the stretch on my own.

interesting. saw how the alien invasive port jackson is being slowly attacked by carbuncular wasp nests, and infinite varieties of limestone growing plants. on the downhill stretch the vegetation had shifted from mountain fynbos terrain to limestone soil.

the weathered rock had a holey-cheese/lunar appearence, and for a while i felt totally isolated in this weird moonscape, with burnt proteas (which kind of looked like microphones), blackened shrubs, and only a few orange-breasted sunbirds chirping noisily around me.

(yes, the appreciation for nature has now extended to birds too)

but finally, i smelt and heard the salty fizz of the ocean over the next hill. and after climbing down a pretty steep incline i made it across the rocky shore to the a-frame huts of noetsie, bypassing washed up redbait, which looked and smelled like old feet.

the noetsie a-frame huts are right on the sea, so we spent the afternoon on a blanket on the grass outside, watching greedy starlings steal food off the rocks, drinking wine, admiring the ocean and loving the fact that we had made it another 15km down the 5 day track.

that night i fell asleep to the sound of the sea. after a mean mushroom pasta cooked over the fire, and a few hours singing eighties tracks off key, a cappella. i'm surprised i could keep up actually. i was only born in '86, and had a huge generation gap to contend with the entire weekend. spandeau ballet, scalectrix, kate bush, say what?

day 3. time to pak 'n toon (pack a toe) along the coast. after watching a pod of dolphins broaching the waves, and doing mean tricks. unfortunately the whale trail is only home to breeding southern right whales from around june to september, but watching the dolphins surfing was substitute enough. for me.

so we set off, and climbed back up the steep hill. even though day three was only
10.5 km it was slightly more challenging, with undulating rocky slopes.

and caves.

one of which i tried to explore but couldn't, i was too scared. there was a weird little wooden hut in that massive grot at stilgat. eerie, dark and well positioned from the wind and weather. a perfect place for the cave-dwelling people who inhabited the coastline long before old jannie v.R joined the VOC.

i can imagine it must be an interesting life, living in a cave along the sea, especially in the beautiful de hoop nature reserve, where the approx. 60km whale trail is marked out with white painted feet. debz thinks she would have like to have been a cave-dweller, making shell necklaces and living off the sea.

by what we could tell, this protected stretch of coastline is ideal for oysters, mussels and fishing. some of the boys were tempted to throw a line into one of the gullies- 4 galjoen an hour with tag and release is the record, as opposed to other nearby fishermen who only catch 1 galjoen in 100 hours. insane.

after some more up and down climbing we eventually reached the memorial statue for a boy called daantjie who drowned off the rocks in 1937. sad. it was the last pile of rocks before the pristine white sand beach, a little walk away from our next cottage.

but no unpacking/resting was done before we had a swim in the sea. no lifeguards here, and a fairly strong rip current kept it interesting. debz got super dunked and almost crashed into kyle. me, being cautious, managed to avoid that, barely.

that afternoon was more of the same. eat eat eat. drink wine. eat more. it was our turn to cook that night so we chopped up and cooked up a huge vegetable/coconut curry. in between epic party stories and a spotted genet hiding in the bushes, which did not respond to thrown stones.

before bed we had some coffee on the dunes, with rusks, and looked up at the infinite number of stars. well, we tried to, but somewhere between leaving the cottage and trying to climb up the quicksand-like dune, the sky was blanketed in cloud. so we saw a few. and then it got cold. so we sank back down the dunes and fell asleep, to the sea, again.

day 4 was more up and down missions, and a fair amount of time walking on the sand. unfortunately lee had hurt her knee/hamstring/leg quite badly, so her and evan decided to leave instead of risking further injury on unstable sand. but minus 2 we carried on strong for the next 8km, stopping frequently to look at rock pools and lie in the sun, which had decided to make an appearence.

it was the best day. in the sunshine we explored the strange petrified rock formations and watched blowholes shoot out white foam from the rocks- the fine mist creating a short-lived rainbow. the last cottage did not have hot water, but it did have a brilliant view of a deep rocky bay, where we could see sets of waves crash, foam, and get drawn out again, keeping up the consistent flow of weathering.

the last sunset was magnificent. pinks, yellows, and the dark blue of shadowed clouds, colours reminiscent of a my little pony cartoon background, without the prolific rainbows.

the last night we drank and ate whatever was left over, and a homecooked lentil bolognese, which may have led to several flatulence jokes the next day while struggling to climb the first uphill. with only 7km to go before the end we dragged out every snack stop, and took a little longer at every rock pool.

i was sad that the 5 day mission to koppie alleen was over. i had gotten into such a rhythym of wake up, eat, walk, see amazing views, sleep. but on the drive back to potberg to fetch our cars i could recap on the beautiful landscape we had passed on the first day, and laughed when i saw two huge baboons wading through the long grass.

soon we were packing up, in the rain, and leaving julian's in bredasdorp, where we had stopped for a well deserved carbo-loaded lunch. the drive back didn't feel as long as before, mainly because this time i wasn't crushed up against the biggest cooler box in the world in the back canopy of the bakkie.

this time i had full reign of the cd frontloader.

and i rode shotgun.