5 April (Day 20)

The most famous trail at Tsitsikamma is called the Otter Trail. The full trail is 5 days long and you need a permit to hike it, but there is a 6.4km portion that is open to everyone. The trail winds along a cliff and leads to a waterfall on the ocean. Today we decided to try it as a group. Within the first ten minutes on the trail we looked out to the water and saw a ton of dolphins, probably twenty or so. They were swimming around right near shore. It was another thing that Sandy said was unique to our group; groups in the past have only seen a couple of dolphins, never as many as we did.

The trail had some boardwalk portions, and it went over big rocks and through some sandy paths and past a cave. It was really beautiful. It finished at this waterfall, which was really more of a trickle. Sandy said that it’s usually a lot bigger, but I guess it’s down this year. The water falls into this pool that everyone else went swimming in. The whole thing was surrounded by huge rocks and it made me pretty uncomfortable, so I just sat on an edge with my feet in the water. Jeff, Jake, Anna, and Jess and climbed up to a big rock and jumped in. It looked really cool.

After we all finished swimming we headed back, broken into a few small groups. Sandy, Kate, Carrie, Sara, Emily, and I were all together following the trail back. We saw log stairs and headed for them, assuming that was where we needed to be. We ran into some guys carrying packs and stuff who told us that we were headed for a very steep trip up. At that point, Sandy and Kate turned back. I guess I’m an idiot, because I assumed that the steep trail would eventually join back up with the first path. It didn’t. We had gone a long way uphill on sets of stairs and steep dirt inclines before we decided that we didn’t like our choice. We were walking away from the ocean and we were unsure as to exactly where the stairs were taking us. We counted the stairs on our way back: 390. Ugh. My legs were killing me, and on our way down we head super loud thunder claps! Having walked over giant rocks to get where we were, we were a bit wary of rain. We tried to rush back to the trail and got sidetracked again! We followed the path through some forest-y areas, rather than the rocks. Bad choice. It dead ended and we had to turn back AGAIN. At this point my legs were shaking from muscle fatigue and I was awkwardly climbing over rocks. The worst part is that I still kind of loved it, even though I looked like a moron. I had a really good time. We even caught up to Sandy and Kate, who had met someone who let them snorkel with him for awhile.

Afterward I wanted nothing more than to swim, so I went to hop in the pool but I just felt so disgustingly sweaty that I ended up going for a shower instead. After showering, most people headed back to Sandy’s to eat. Not me. Jeff continued hiking, taking the key to his and Jake’s hut with him. Which meant that poor Jake was stranded at the huts without access to soap or clean clothes. So, being the wonderful friends that we are, Alex and I let him hang out in our hut with us and Anna. We worked on teaching him how to bridge a deck of cards. There’s a really cute video of Anna trying to teach him. At the end he gets it and the look on his face, followed by the look at the camera to see if I got it, is like a five year old.
After waiting around for a long time, we ended up giving him soap and one of Alex’s shirts so that we could just go since we were all starving, so he took a shower. As we were leaving to go to Sandy’s, Jeff showed up. So after we took the time to find clothes that would fit him, he ended up changing into his own anyway.

Everyone met up at Sandy’s and Pierre braaied again. This time we had ostrich fillets, it was sooo good. For dessert, Alex, Anna, and I made dirt cups, kind of. I’m not so good at making instant pudding, it seems. It ended up really watery and not super desirable, but everyone was nice and said it was good anyway.