Wednesday evening, March 10
Sadly, we saw no dolphins today. (We hear January is the best time for that.) We saw no otters, either, though there was plenty of otter dung. Apparently their practice is to rise early from their dens among the rocks along the ocean, then creep up the streams that trickle down from the bluffs, snacking on fish and crustaceans and whatever else they can find. They ascend for about 1000 feet, chill out up at the top, then make their way back at the end of the day.

Stan also pointed out where porcupines had dug under bushes, seeking tasty roots and ants. Polecats do something similar, and we saw those scratchings too. We failed to spot any bush pigs or snakes, and the closest we came to baboons today was a couple of deposits of their excrement, “You can recognize it because it looks a lot like human’s, ” Stan told us. Still, for all that we failed to see, for as much as much as my (bad) left knee aches at the moment, this two-day hike has to rank among the most memorable of my life.

For one thing, our weather luck was wonderful. It was so hot when we drove from Pt. Elizabeth to the park Monday morning that the air flowing through the vents into our (un-air-conditioned) car felt like it was coming from the heater. An hour after we checked into the park cabin, the moisturizer in the tube in my suitcase was still hot to the touch. But Tuesday (the first day of our hike) dawned much cooler and a mix of clouds and sun made the trekking ideal. Today was even mistier, even foggy at times, but that too felt refreshing. By the time we stopped for our final picnic lunch, distant thunder was rumbling, and we expected we might get soaked in the final stretch before we reached the Fernery lodge. The rain held off, however, until just a few minutes ago. Now it’s pouring amidst thunder and lightning, a goodsend in this parched region.

At the picnic in the woods, where another Fernery employee named Marius had arrived to set up a table filled with homemade bread, gourmet cheeses, cold cuts, salad, and a pudding pie, Marius asked if we usually hike when we travel. Although there’ve been a few memorable exceptions (e.g. the Inca Trail), we had to say no. And the question made me wonder why we’d chosen to do so here. Why escape into nature for two days, when our goal has been to gain better understanding of the people and cultures within South Africa?

Getting to know Stan actually did wind up advancing that goal nicely. Our leave-taking yesterday was emotional; it amazes me what a relationship one can form in just two days. Beyond that, however, I’d have to say I’d suspected the physical beauty of this trail would justify hiking it. And it did. The plant life alone was enchanting — so many plants that are fixtures of life in San Diego — agapanthus, calla lilies, ice plant, society garlic — growing wild here, and so much many more wonderful things I’d never seen.

We climbed up the sides of cliffs so steep I was gasping at the top, followed trails frighteningly close to murderous abysses, penetrated dark, green leafy sanctuaries that Stan called “the jungle,” but then amended, when pressed. True jungles are actually a bit wetter than these “Afro-montane forests,” he said. But they felt jungly, filled as they were with hidden vervet monkeys and baboons, exotic snakes, huge insects.

Best of all, I think, was the second day, when we descended from the Misty Mountain Reserve to the shoreline, which we followed for several hours. Here the sea meets the land not on sandy beaches but at huge black Table Mountain sandstone formations thickly veined with quartz. The layers have been tilted over the eons by almost 70 or 80 degrees, and the edges worn away so that they look not like delicate lines in a block of solid rock, but rather enormous pancake stacks, with jagged, frayed edges. It almost made me dizzy to look at them — as of the world had turned sideways and I had somehow remained off-kilter. The first time we reached a shore like this, Steve and I both quailed. How could we traverse the daunting jumble of rock? We learned the answer as we followed steady, sure-footed Stan: the formations actually provided dozens of footholds at every turn. You just had to take your time and find them.

Stan was off work today, so Marius drove us in a Land Rover back to the park, along a dirt road that 50 years ago was the only way route for vehicles to get from Cape Town to Pt. Elizabeth. It was an interesting drive, through pine plantations and dairy farms, and when we arrived back at the park, we took an even more amazing trip, on a boat up the narrow gorge through which the Storms River flows to the sea.

Now we’ve into the Phantom Forest Eco-Reserve, recommended by our friends the Zatkins. Tomorrow we’ll set off on the Road More Traveled by tourists — along the so-called Garden Route, to the cape wine country for a day, then finally to explore Cape Town until next Thursday next, when we fly home. It will probably be less adventurous than what we have been experiencing. But I’m guessing it still won’t feel like we’re back in Kansas yet.

Wednesday morning, March 10,2010

Paul Theroux, in his Dark Star Safari (which I’m enjoying hugely), comments on how he kept meeting Jobergers with amazing tales to tell. His friend the novelist Nadine Gordimer responds that this is a characteristic of South Africans generally, that their lives have been full of events.

We’re seeing the same thing. Last night after we finished our homemade ice cream and apricot panna cotta, the resident manager at Misty Mountain Reserve, Frank Machetto, regaled us with stories about his experiences leading tourists on camping trips (in tents!) in the bush near Kruger National Park. (“Only had to use my gun once. Never had to kill an animal, thank God. But I’d never take anyone who was nervous. Couldn’t have that.”) An Afrikaner, Frank also discoursed with passion and bitterness about ecological disruptions that have occurred near and far. “They kill the puff adders but then you get an explosion in the population of mice! Or the do-do bird! There are trees that have almost disappeared because the seeds have to be germinated in the gut of the do-do bird. But they’ve been gone for 100 years!”

This place is even more upscale than our forest cabin in the park: Even NICER linens on a king-size bed in a space as big as a living room, with a deck commanding a 150-degree view of the Indian Ocean. Circumstances have also conspired to make it feelas homey as our B&Bs in Joburg. The preparation of our excellent meal last night (spinach soup, tuna roulade and home-made bread, medallions of kudu shoulder with a pepper sauce, curried chicken, roasted potatos and squash, broccoli au gratin, salad, and that awesome dessert) was supervised by Val Lane, the wife of the man who dreamed up the idea for the Dolphin Trail hike. The Lanes for a couple dozen years had run a dairy farm on this site, but Dave Lane was a passionate fisherman and hiker who believed there had to be a market for a less arduous way of experiencing this incredible coastline than the Otter Trail backpacking. He and the owner of the Fernery (our lodging tonight) worked out a partnership arrangement with the national park, and the Dolphin Trail hikes were inaugurated in 2001. Tragically, Dave died suddenly four years ago, and when Val concluded she wasn’t up to running the operation by herself, she hired Frank and his wife Rose as resident managers.

Misty Mountain Reserve, as this place is now known, can accommodate 18 guests, but we were the only ones in the dining room last night. A group of five arrived sometime after us last night, but they were staying in a the family quarters and “self-catering.” So Steve and I were again the only guests at breakfast today. Frank announced that he had “slept like a baby. Woke up every hour and cried for my mama!” He jokes a lot. Yet soon he was talking again about the ominous current drought and wildebeest-borne diseases and advancing desertification. “As soon as cattle were brought into Africa, unfortunately that was the end of Africa,” he said. But we’re about to hike for a second day in at least an island of the Africa that has existed for millenia.