By Ruth
Distance: 28 km
It feels great to be on the move! We did not have the most ideal weather today, as yesterday’s rainstorm hasn’t quite passed through all the way yet, but it was great to be walking, even in the rain.
After leaving the hostel, we walked 15 minutes to the other side of town, and caught a hitch 5 minutes up the highway to where our walk for the day got started, on a gravel road through farmland. We could see some forested hills in the distance.
We walked along rural roads for about 15km before I started getting very hungry for lunch. The problem was it was raining on and off, but when it was raining on, it was raining hard. And around lunchtime was one of those times. Just as I was despairing to ever find a dry place to sit and make a wrap, we came across the Krishna Sanctuary, which is the home of a couple of trail angels who offer hot cooked lunch for hikers along this section. We couldn’t get the cooked lunch because we would have had to let them know ahead of time that we were coming, but we figured we might just be able to get a dry spot to sit and eat our wraps. And luckily we were right! We got a nice dry table and chairs on their back porch to eat and dry off a little bit.
Almost immediately after we left the Krishna Sanctuary we started leaving farmland behind in favour of the forest. This was my favourite part of the day. It felt like we were in a jungle as we started climbing up a ridge with the rain coming down, birds chirping loudly all around, and lots of dense vegetation.
As we were coming down the other side of the ridge I started to get nervous, because I knew it meant we were getting close to the river crossing. If the river was too high to cross, we would have to climb back up and over the ridge to a campsite we had already passed, and try again tomorrow.
We arrived at the stream crossing, and it was a lot higher than we’d seen in pictures.
Fearlessly, Elliot hiked up his shorts as high as they would go. He began to wade across. He made it over, shorts dry, with an inch to spare. Next I followed his path, and just about managed to stay dry as well, other than my boots. If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that we both only have one pair of shoes with us on this trip. So that’s what we wore to get across. We were hiking with another gentlemen who removed his pants entirely, changed into his water shoes, and made it safely across as well. We felt a great sense of relief and accomplishment on the other side.
After that, it was smooth sailing into town. The campground here is next to the rugby pitch and we are using the covered area next to the old clubhouse to set up our tents. The rain started coming down even harder after we arrived so we are very happy to have the extra protection, as well as somewhere dry to sit and eat dinner.
It was a pretty big distance day but with the changing scenery and river crossing excitement, it all went by really quickly. Excited for another day of adventure tomorrow! Maybe my feet will even be dry for some of it.