Forced March

Wendy and I took a short break away from the cold of Lesotho in the latter part of July.  We left the snows of Lesotho, to drive through the snows of South Africa, but finally reached the Indian Ocean coast.  At the coast it is still winter, but the moderating effect of the Indian Ocean waters does mean much warmer nights relative to Lesotho.

At one place we stayed, we looked out over the ocean and along the coast.  In the ‘near’ distance, up the coast, was a promontory with a big rock at the end.  Maybe a hiking goal we thought.

I was out early the next morning on my own and thought in an hour or so I should reach the point. Off I went to check it out, but after walking for an hour, and seeming only half way there, I thought I better get back and try again later with Wendy.  The next day we set out early with the tide going out.  It was an auspicious start with a whale surfacing just off the shore as be started, beckoning us on with a wave of a flipper.

The outgoing tide left the sand on the beach beautifully packed, and the walking was easy under a clear blue sky.  We reached the one-hour point I had reached the day before in about the same amount of time, and I was thinking, another hour to go and lots of time to get back before the tide would be in.  The promontory however, seemed not to be getting any closer as we continued on for the next hour.

At the end of the second hour we had reached a rocky section of shore, where some locals were harvesting oysters.  The first fellow was on the shore having a smoke and tending a small fire, while it was a woman out wading in the water with a short iron bar, searching for and chipping the oysters from the rocks.  She methodically checked in, around, and under the rocks, prying off the oysters she found with a deft stroke from her bar, and then placing them into a sack tied to her waist.  A bit further along we saw a couple of other fellows, half heartedly it seemed, poking around for oysters amongst the rocks.  Much like what I so often see, I thought, the woman doing the bulk of the work while the men have it easy.

By this time we were beginning to consider a “turn-back” time.  The promontory seemed not much closer, but we figured we still had time.  The rocks were less easy to make good time on, but we soldiered on.  At one point we thought, just another 15 minutes.  But at the end of the 15 minutes we were just as far away it seemed.  But we must be getting close.  I thought of how hard it must be for those Mount Everest climbers to turn back when the goal seems so close.  We gave out selves a further 15 minutes, which we stretched out to 20 and we arrived, three hours after out departure.  Our goal, the rock at the end of the promontory that seemed to get smaller at times, now rose above us, a small hill.

We clambered to the top and enjoyed a fine view.  The view included, on a pretty little bay the other side of the point, maybe a kilometer away, a parking lot.  We could have driven.  As we rested at the top and enjoyed the view, and a quick lunch, we considered continuing on to the parking lot in hopes of finding a taxi back.  But what if there were no taxis?  We settled for the beach.

Back we headed.  First over and through the rocky sections.  The tide had turned, but high tide was still five hours away.  Some ways on, we met the oyster gatherers, and I had to retract my critical thoughts about the men.  Two of them, each carrying on their shoulders a large sack of oysters, maybe 40-50 pounds, led the way.  They had come a long way already and they still a good part of an hour trudge over rough ground to reach the promontory, and then the distance to the parking lot.  The last fellow was carrying the woman’s iron bar, and having completed her task, her now strolled along unencumbered.

As we proceeded past the rocky section the incoming tide was disrupting the firmly packed sand we had enjoyed on our walk out.  The sand higher up the beach was too dry and soft and made the going tough.  The sand where the surf had surged in was now too wet and also soft.  As we continued the narrow strip of firm sand in between too dry and too wet grew smaller and smaller.  Trying to pick a path between too dry and too wet gave me a whole new appreciation for Goldilocks and her fixation on “just right”.

There was no easy way out and on we trudged.  The warmth and the sun trying to keep out spirits up as our legs and ankles complained more and more.  Our march was broken at one point when a school of dolphins swept by, leaping in and out of the swell.  I got out our binoculars, and watched.  The binoculars enabled me to see the dolphins up close, even just below the surface of the leading edge of the surging swells.  To my amazement, in the leading edge of a swell, I would frequently see three, four, and sometimes more dolphins, in a row, facing down the swell.  It was if they were body surfing in the waves!  Leaping and surfing, the dolphins continued their way along the shore line and were soon lost from view.  Back to our trudging we turned.

After we had been trudging for nearly three hours we arrived at a place that it had taken us an hour to walk out when the sand was firm.  We still had at least an hour’s walk ahead, and now the incoming tide caused me to think ahead to rock cliff bands that reached down to the sea.  If the tide was in sufficiently to block our return, it would mean backtracking and taking another, longer path, up and around, to get back to our accommodation.  We arrived at the cliff bands some fifty minutes later and the incoming surf was surging up to the base of the rock before briefly retreating.  Timing the surge, I scrambled over the sand under the first band.  Wendy followed, but not before giving me a brief moment of anxiety, waiting where I feared she might get wet.  The second band, Wendy nimbly darted through and around, while I took the more laborious route.  I managed the ‘through’ part on the sand, but then clambered up and over, rather than around, the final section of rock.

The steep climb back up to our accommodation lay only another ten minutes beyond the rock bands, and soon we were making our way slowly up.  It was with aching legs and ankles that we dragged out tired bodies over the last metres to the top.  What had taken three hours out, had taken four hours back.  What had been planned as a four-hour day, had taken seven.

Our goal,the small sand coloured rock,
 as viewed from our accommondation.

Why things along a coast sometimes seem closer I do not know.  Consulting a map later that evening we realized that the walk to the point had been over eleven kilometers, one way.  The taxi might have provided a quicker ride home, but we would have had no story to tell of our forced march back.  :-)

~ Benno ~