Can Do! Trekking for Trash Day 29 – 41
Our friend, Callie, had recently arrived back from the UK and she had a bit of time on her hands before her life became hectic again and thus offered her services as our support team for a week. She managed to negotiate amazing accommodation in Paternoster with her brilliant PR/trade-exchange skills. We left there early on the morning of the 31st of October and she drove us deep into the West Coast National Park right to the top of the peninsula and we started walking from there.
We had 16 miles of white sand ahead of us and we could see Yzerfontein (our end point) right from the beginning. We filled the backpack within 1km which was very depressing. It is such a beautiful beach yet it is just full of rubbish. All of it from the sea. We walked past the “Patelis A Lemos ” wreck and shortly after that I spotted the shadow on the horizon which looked remarkably similar to Table Mountain. I had this weird sense of exhilaration and achievement rushing through my body but I stared at it for another 15 minutes before I let myself celebrate. After another kilometer I was certain, it was unmistakably her! Woohoo!
The many dead seals we had grown accustomed to finding were replaced my giant jelly fish! It was another very tough day in the soft sand but we were rewarded at the end with a hot bath and shower at the Burnett family’s holiday home who generously housed and fed the 3 of us for a couple of nights. The next morning, Thursday, we walked 27km south from Yzerfontein to Grotto Bay. Callie collected us there and took us back to sleep in Yzerfontein. We found our first proper recycling depot and spent some time there sorting out all our trash.
On Friday we walked from Grotto Bay to Koeberg. It started off as one of my worst days. We’d been forced up onto a cliff path with thick waist-high bushy vegetation which was scratching me to pieces. It was stiflingly hot and there were plagues of bugs swarming round us. There were annoying thorns that kept poking through our socks and shoes and there were snakes EVERYWHERE. Eventually we found our way back down to the a beach and then it swiftly become one of my favourite days! The beaches and the views of Table Mountain were absolutely spectacular. We stopped for a swim in the azure blue water near an ancient Cape Dutch house nestled in a cove above a beautiful bay. Just after we passed it we could see Koeberg quite clearly in the distance but it just never seemed to get any closer. We walked for hours and hours and my shin was screaming at me the whole way.
We came across some strange yellow floatation devices washed up on the beach and there were sections of heavily littered beach. Eventually we hit a no-entry sign. We had to climb over some dunes and found a mountain biking trail which we followed for 4km until we hit the West Coast road directly in front of the sky diving turn-off. Poor Callie had been driving up and down for an hour and a half trying to find us along the road. It was a mammoth 10 hour day but we only had one more day to go before a rest day at home in Cape Town.
That night the Burnett’s and some friends drove up to Yzerfontein to spend the night with us and we had a lovely braai. The next morning we set off quite early to conquer the home stretch. We started from the south side of Koeberg at Duynefontein. Mike’s ex boss, Ran, and his girlfriend, Dani, flew down from Joburg to walk with us for the whole day and a few other friends joined for parts of the 20km stretch which was lots of fun. We identified a really bad build up of trash just south of Melkbosstrand and posted a picture on Facebook. We were over the moon to learn that the next day the Swanepoel family had gone down there and filled 16 bags of litter and posted a picture to us. Efforts like this make it all worthwhile!
We ended off at Dolphin Beach Hotel near Milnerton and had a well deserved drink with our friends. Sunday was a rest-day and on Monday we didn’t walk either as we had to give a presentation to the Promeal factory in Atlantis. On Tuesday we picked up at Dolphin Beach hotel and we walked all the way to Camps Bay. We got a little lost in the docks but otherwise we had a great walk and we were joined by a good friend, Simon, who helped collect a few bags of trash en route. We were grateful to be able to recycle them at the V&A Waterfront halfway. Wednesday was definitely one of our toughest days. Although the distance was about half of what we usually cover in a day, the wind made it almost unbearable. It was one of the strongest Cape Town southeasters that I have ever seen and I have lived here for 30 years. Mike and I were literally on our hands and knees clinging to the road up Llandudno hill to stop ourselves being blown over the edge. We found a bit of shelter as we walked through Sandy Bay but again we were sandblasted and blown off our feet as we climbed the dunes into Hout Bay. The last beach stretch on Hout Bay was hideous. I had swallowed about 4kg’s of sand and my skin was stinging from the violent exfoliation!
