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Published: March 15th 2007
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I just finished a beautiful trek on the Otter Trail in Tsitsikamma National Park. It is a 42km trail that takes five days. Why five days? You are required to stay in huts along the trail, and can't skip huts. The huts only sleep 12 people and that is how many they allow on the trail each day. Pretty regulated huh? I'm told that this trail is one of the most popular in S. Africa. Sometimes booked up a year in advance. I called <1 week and found a space. What is even more amazing is that there were only 4 of us total on the trail the whole time. They said they had booked it a year in advance and had all twelve spots but people dropped out. Lucky me and lucky us.
Most of the trail is along the coast. Sometimes it ventures away from the actual coast but you are always within earshot of the sea. Often you are over 100 meters from the water, of course that is 100 meters straight down a cliff. The coast is amazing. It is very sheer, often over 100 meters to the top of the cliff. In a few places
there are beaches, but mostly the water is strewn with giant boulders. The surf is constantly crashing over and around these boulders. Truly an amazing spectacle to behold.
I got really lucky being able to hike with Wayne, Nicole, and Tim. Wayne had done this trail before so he knew all the secret spots. We took a break at this one river crossing and had a good swim. The water is cold and clean, but not clear. It is a dark, tea brown from all the plant tannins. Though apparently perfectly safe to drink, so far so good. That is actually the condition off all the fresh water in the park. The swimming hole at this particular place was awesome. The river flows into this hole through a short, narrow canyon. We swam upstream through this canyon to more pools up above.
The hikes on day two and three are relatively short, only 8 kms. This is mostly because there is lots of ups and downs. Day four has the longest hike of almost 14kms, but it is mostly flat. Just one major climb. What I found most interesting on these days were the river crossings on days
three and four. On day three you cross the Lottering River and on day four you cross the Bloukrans River. For both of these crossings they provide you with a tide table and suggest that you cross at low tide. Once again I got lucky, the low tide was around 1400-1500 both days. So we didn't have to hike in the dark.
But our first major river crossing was early on day three, the Elandsbos River. Now when I mention river crossing I'm not talking, Consauga River rock hops. The Elandsbos was a put on your bathing suite (or swimming costume) and wade out chest deep with your back on your head. Hope you don't step in a whole or bang a rock and fall. But we all made it safely across.
At the end of the day was the Lottering River. We must have planned this perfectly because it was a rock hop. Though Tim decided he didn't want to climb the hill on the other side, he wanted to just float the 100 meters to the hut. But the rest of us just did the rock hop.
The Bloukrans River, mid day 4 was our
bane. Wayne had remember it as a small trickle when found at low tide. We got there about an hour before low tide and had lunch while we watched the tide go out. The tide did go out but the surf never seemed to dissipate. Just before the scheduled low tide I did an exploratory hike and determined that I had to swim to make the crossing and there was still a rip of current going out. So we waited a bit more, then decided it wasn't going to get better. Once again, thanks to my luck in finding new friends I was aided. Wayne's parents had sent them out with floatation bag. Really just a giant trash bag to put the packs in so they would float and stay dry. This proved quite useful, because I got spanked in my crossing. I reached at point that I could barely stand, and was having a terrible time trying to keep my bag out of the water. Oh yeah, we knew that the floatation bag did have some holes in it. Anyway, then I got hit by a wave and was under water trying to press my bag out of the
water. When I came up I realized that I was being swept upstream into the river and the deep area. I just gave up and swam for the beach. I was spent when I crawled out. But I had to go back and take the bag back to Wayne. On my trip back I realized that we had mistimed the low tide and the tide was coming back in...quickly. We made it all across safely. While the outside of my back was wet, nothing inside was.
We didn't see many animals on this trek. I saw a couple of bush bok (deer) and ganets. Ganets are small scavanger cats. We did have a run in one night when a ganet came up on our porch and made away with one of Tim's food bags. We got it back. We did see lots of bird life including a Knysna Lourie I also saw some pretty unique locusts. Very strange colors. And no we didn't see any Otters.
Overall a wonderful experience and accomplishment. And my back held up fine. Ah yes, Jambos?
Well, Jambos are these shortbread biscuits, cookies, with a jelly center. They are cheap and good. My
hiking mates made fun of me because it seemed as though, at every meal I had Jambos. I guess I did. That is the Jambo story.
Click here to see all the amazing pictures
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Just a reminder...
do you have your NCAA brackets done? First round tip off games start at 11:20, better hurry up.