The Otter Trail

I am back in the village. I was away doing an awesome thing. The thing was the Otter Trail. I know. It sounds pretty weak. To add insult to injury, the otters in question are Cape Clawless Otters. So any danger that you may have been able to conjure from the idea of otter scratch-attacks disappears into comedy. If these otters are to attack, one can only assume that they bring it on with a slapping maneuver. I felt little threat but, as always, was on my guard just in case.

That we had read the visitors book at the beginning and saw that someone spotted a 4 meter zambese shark in the Bloukrans River, was a more immediate concern. I remembered that the smart money on the ‘how will Pete meet his maker in South Africa’ sweepstake was on shark attack. Work colleagues had even bought me a book on shark species. I shuddered.

The otter trail is a 5 day, 4 night hike in Tsitsikamma national park, along the coast at the bottom end of South Africa. It is right at the edge of the Eastern Cape and pretty damn far away from Zithulele. 12 people get to go at a time as there are two huts at each stop with 6 beds in each. The huts are great, simple things: pretty new and very clean. There are cold showers and toilets as well as water. Luxury, really.

So we set off on Friday lunchtime with very heavy bags, even more weighted down with the guilt of packing so much. The group consisted of me and 11 others. I was a complete stranger to all, having taken our friend Liz’s place as she had to work. The otter trail books up one year in advance so she and they did me an amazing favour in letting me go. I was really lucky.

The group was an assortment from 22 to about 60 years old. All were Christian white South Africans apart from me. This made me feel a little bit of an outsider, but I had confidence in my inimitable charm and wit. I am not sure whether anyone suspected that I was a heathen as we did not discuss religion openly. I am fairly sure that my irreverent style and swearing (though toned down considerably) gave the game away. I also omitted to say amen at the group prayer sessions. Who am I kidding, they knew. And they found out that I am living in sin too. I have to admit to harbouring a level of discomfort at various times when people are opining about ‘lord God’ – something which has been a feature of our stay in South Africa. The culture of Christianity here is just much more prevalent than in the UK and it pervades more of other aspects of life (health, government, education), where it is kept conspicuously segregated back home. Still, it is interesting chatting with folk who come from a very different perspective and it makes you challenge your own beliefs and lifestyle.

The otter trail consists of short days of only about 8k. They are hilly but easily manageable in much less than a day. The exception is the fourth day, which is 14k and also involves the hardest river crossing, after 10 of those 14k. It is important to get there at low tide for the crossing so we checked the tide tables eagerly at base camp. 8am. That meant a wake-up of 2am to ensure that we could night-hike there in good time to cross. Exciting. And it really brought the group together with folk bonding and helping eachother out.

As I swam across the Bloukrans, I shuddered again. It was morning, an estuary, the water was cloudy and sharks were known to swim there before (all of these things are to be avoided as they increase the risks of shark attack). Fortunately a woman called Ailsa took the bull by the horns. We were all faffing about on the shore thinking about how to get out of it when someone asked where she was. She was only halfway across the river! Good leadership. Gave us all confidence to follow.

Wait. Liz just came in (real time) and told us (among other things) that they once had a patient here who cut off his own testicles with a pair of scissors. “He was a psych patient”. “No shit”.

After the swim and a little secret sip of whisky for me, we faced a horrible rocky section. The map said ‘not advised’, but we were not keen to go for alternative route bouldering around the edge of the cliff above the water. The cliff was pretty darn steep and ropes were attached for most of the way. No one fell to their death, and that was a real bonus – icing on the cake stuff. We all looked back with an odd tired confusion at how we had managed to do it all.

And we had a beautiful sunny day coming on fast and a feeling of achievement. The views got better and better and the tiredness just made it all the more wonderful.

We saw otters, too, by the way. But when they saw me they bottled it and shot off into the bush. Maybe if they had had claws they would have tried it on, but I gave them that martial arts stare and they knew I had won before the battle had begun.