Or Laura as others like to call her. Yes, after more than 24 hours travel I finally managed to arrive in Port Elizabeth via Paris and Joburg. I really can’t quite work out how it took that long and I blame it all on Air France. Let’s just leave it at that.
It was amazing to see Laura and her daughter Megan again – all grown up. That’s Megan – not Laura obviously. We’re all still waiting for that to happen. Haha. I should explain. Laura is one of my oldest friends from school and she moved to South Africa 13 years ago now. Her little girl Megan was born out here after Laura met Dave the Game Ranger.
Anyway she now lives in PE and runs Greencycle which is a recycling collection business. Hence I
Iike to call her The Womble. She works incredibly hard and I am very proud of her – although I’d never tell her that of course. Megan is now 12 and very tall and elegant. I also met William who is Laura’s boyfriend. He’d been out playing golf but came home for his tea. I know people back home have been waiting to hear the word and I can report people that he seems very nice and normal.
Well that was all on Saturday and then yesterday Laura and I packed up ready to start our walk – The Dolphin Trail. This is a walk that runs along the Tsitsikamma National Park coastline and it goes in the opposite direction to the world famous Otter Trail. I’d quite fancied walking the Otter Trail originally but it’s five days of serious hiking, carrying all your own supplies and sleeping in shacks. I’d also read that you have to wade across waist high rivers and that just didn’t sound like us. When I found the Dolphin Trail I thought ‘hmm, this is more like it.’ Two days of hiking, bags transported from one place to the next, luxury accommodation and the guides carry all you water etc for the day. It’s also know as the Princess Trail or The Slack Packers’ trail.
So this what we drove two hours over here to Tsitsikamma to do and more of which later. For now though we didn’t really have anything to do other than to check into our Forest Cabin and go for a little potter. Our first stop was before we entered the National Park as we went off to see The Big Tree. It was indeed a big tree and we had a little walk along the boardwalk to see it. It’s in fact a giant yellowwood and was impressive.
After this we went and checked into our accommodation and had a drive along to Reception. We had a spot of lunch and then decided to leave the car and walk back to our hut. The views here are incredible as anyone who has been here will know. The actual spot is known as Storms River Mouth and there is a campsite and cabins all along the edge of the coast. It has to be one of the most scenic campsites in the world. Laura and I have stayed here before and the thing you come to see here is the sea. The waves here can be massive but are always a great sight as they smack against the rocks and explode on impact into huge clouds of spray. It’s stunning and we walked all along the camp and road admiring the waves.
Back at our hut we sat on the balcony looking out to sea. It would have been nice here but today it was incredibly windy and it actually got quite cold. At one point Laura tried to create a windbreak with the plastic table but it blew across the deck nearly impaling us on its plastic legs. We decided to retreat inside.
Eventually we crept out again and decided to venture out onto the rocks. They are quite sharp and we precariously made our way down to get closer to the waves at various points. I had entirely the wrong type of shoes on for this sort of malarky and scrambled about on the rocks like a fifty year old woman. After checking out some Rock Hyrax (Dassie) – nearest living relative to the elephant – it was time to go back and get ready for our briefing and dinner. We walked back down to Reception to and meet our fellow walkers for the next two days.
The briefing pretty much consisted of being told be there at 9am for breakfast and then signing our lives away on some sort of indemnity. Then we all had dinner together. Our group would consist of:
Bruce and Ann – visiting vegetarians from Iowa
Jane – a doctor from Canada here for a meeting in Joburg that she extended for a month
Michaela and Michael from Germany who looked young and have very long legs.
It all took too long to serve our dinner but it was very nice and there was loads of it. After this we drove back to the cabin to try and sleep. I say ‘try’ because it turns out that’s very difficult when it sounds as if those huge waves are about to pound into your cabin in the middle of the night. Something I seem to have forgotten from last time…..
Not really one proper walk then but a nice little warm up for our big two days. Bring it on.
Walky Talky 