We picked up from Suiderstrand and the easy walk to Struisbaai was made quite unpleasant from the gale force winds! We were made very welcome on arrival at the Mermaid Guest House who had offered us a discounted rate for 3 nights. We had a delicious dinner at Zuidste Kaap the first night but the second night at a little place down the road from the hotel was rather comical. We were served (eventually) plates of mush vaguely resembling food. Heath, our Kiwi support driver, ordered bottomless ribs and he won that round for sure. The mush we managed to wash down was sustenance enough to tackle the following long beach stretch.
Supposedly the longest unbroken stretch of beach in the southern hemisphere but I wonder what they mean by ‘unbroken’. I distinctly remember crossing a rather deep river mouth halfway. The weather was miserable, it was windy and we got caught in a squall. Luckily we both love walking in the rain. It was a pity it wasn’t a clearer, less grey day as the colour of the water in that area leading up to Arniston is really quite unlike anywhere else on the coast and it would have been amazing to walk alongside it on 26km of white sandy beach. When we got close to Arni, we found lots of laden mussel and oyster beds. Mike got a little overexcited and managed to slice his hand open with my uber-sharp Bear Grylls knife whilst shucking an oyster for me. I dare say it was worth it, they were delicious. We tied up his hand with his shirt and my bikini-top’s string, swapped backpacks and walked the remaining few km’s as fast as we could to meet Heath at the Waenhuiskrans caves.
Heath drove Mike into Bredasdorp to get stitched up and then we had an amazing meal and vino at The Arniston Hotel to help the pain. We had a very comfortable nights sleep there before heading to Arniston Guesthouse for the next 2 nights. I spent the rest day in the spa and came out feeling like a girl again and we had a farewell dinner for Heath/Welcome dinner for Jordyn at the Willenes restaurant in the old fishermans village. The next morning we were joined by the Stubbs family and their friends who walked with us to the border of the Overberg Testing Range. They turned around at the fence and Mike and I continued on to the deserted fishing town of Skipskop. We were very grateful to be granted access to walk this stretch. Very, very few people have been allowed in there.
We found incredible amounts of sea-borne litter and also came across a sick turtle which was very sad. At Skipskop we were met by our new driver Jordyn and the chief of security, Brian. The following day he escorted us back to Skipskop and we completed the section in Denel, finishing up at Koppie Alleen in De Hoop. We checked into our beautiful cottage at the De Hoop Collection and did some filming for our Home Channel insert. Mike and I took a drive around the reserve to the vlei and watched the frolicking flamingos and giant white pelicans as the sun set. We also spotted a hare, various buck, zebra and even Cape Mountain Zebra’s.
The next day we completed 3 stages of the magnificent Whale trail in 1 day, walking from Koppie Alleen to Noetsie rest camp. This section of shoreline is shaped so as to form a natural ‘whale nursery’. On any given day in season, you are bound to spot a good dozen of these languid leviathans lolling about. De Hoop is one of the places where they come to calve, court and cavort. The terrain became more intensive with undulating hills and cliffs but the clear, well maintained path made it easy. I loved the exercise and again became aware of how much I prefer climbing to walking endlessly on a flat surfaces. The next morning we headed to Potberg to meet Callum Beatie from Cape Nature who lent us 3 rangers to walk the coastal, unchartered stretch from Noetsie to Infanta.
The first half was quite tough but we managed to negotiate our way around cliffs and headlands. At about midday the tide had come in and we were forced up. There were no paths or animal tracks in some sections leaving us no choice but to bundu bash through thick, thorny, waist high rooikrans right on the edge of 80m cliff overhangs. I had a really rough time with my fear of heights and my gut feeling was to get back down to the rocks which although also risky seemed a safer option. I find it very difficult to trust people I barely know, especially when I realised they had actually never taken this route along the coast so they were guessing just as much as us. We managed to get around to the lighthouse in one piece where the guides pulled out leaving Mike and I alone to complete the last stretch from the edge of the reserve to Infanta. We continued on with shaky legs into hour 8 and when we were descending yet another sheer sandstone cliff, the bolder I had anchored onto came loose and I fell hard bruising myself quite badly. I was very lucky I found something to grab onto or I would have been tickets and equally grateful that the rock didn’t fall in Mikes direction below me and take him out.
Once we crossed the de hoop boundary there was more hacking through thicket trying to find away around headland after headland. Eventually after 10 hours we found a road down. Mike really impressed me with how he dealt with the whole day. I was less than impressed with how I managed to cope with it. I felt almost traumatised at the end and had to keep telling myself that I didn’t want this adventure to be easy. I think broken up into sections it would have been more manageable but not having clear footing and being in the fear zone on the edge of cliffs for that amount of time had almost beaten me. I tried to think pragmatically about it though. Enduring means accepting. Accepting things as they are and not as you’d wish them to be and then looking ahead not behind. It was good introduction to what is to come I guess as we tackle the hard part of the coast.
Arriving in Infanta to the charming seaside cottage belonging to the Orpen family was like heaven. I hibernated for 24 hours and let my body (and 35 new scars on my legs) heal. We did a bit of fishing and I caught a blaashoppie on my first cast and then nothing. The others caught grunter, which was absolutely delicious on the braai that night. After the rest day we were excited to be on terra-firma-flatter walking from Witsands east – that is, after crossing the shark infested Breede river!!
