Hiking the Shipwreck Trail... Day 1

Day 1: East Beach to Milkwood hut - 8.6km
 Ready to hike!

In October of 2013 We started looking at some of the really cool trails here in South Africa. We wanted to try a "slack-packing" trail where you can hike with a day pack and all your gear gets dropped off at the next hut for you. Many of these trails are booked well over a year in advance! We picked a cool 5 night option about 2 hours north of us and I was optimistic since we were 15 months out from the Dec '14 hike date we wanted. But it turns out that our start date was already taken! We had to start one day later on a Tuesday instead, talk about planning ahead! I shelved this trip in my mind since it was so far in the future but before we knew it we were packing our backpacks! We drove up to Port Alfred, left the car at the end and got a shuttle back to the start of the hike from Dave, the trail manager. SA bucket-list item check-off: Unrestrained ride in the back of a "bakkie"!

 We hit East Beach in Port Alfred on a cool windy day and started hiking north.....

 ...and immediately hit our first SNAFU. We picked up a 5th team member. We figured this dog would eventually stop following us so we tried not to encourage him and even tried to "shoo" him back down the beach.

 And we spotted the first shipwreck! This is the remains of a tug boat that ran aground a long time ago.

 2km's down the beach we realized that we really needed to do something about the dog. We were hiking 8 km's and getting farther and farther from civilization and we didn't want the dog to be stranded on a desolate section of beach OR get shot by a farmer following us onto farmland or who knows what else. We tried to chase the dog off but it was no good. He wanted to stay with us. We had to hike 2km all the way back to East Beach. Poor Ted. He was in tears and wanted to keep the dog, find it a new home, take it to America, you name it. He was so sad and it was a bummer of a way to start the hike. The dog DID have a collar and at one point we spotted someone far off on the dock and took off running so we figured he did have an owner somewhere. He came back to us after that though and we had to have some lifeguards hold on him until we could escape back down the beach and out of sight.

 After that everyone was a little bit sad but the day was too nice to stay sad for long. We came upon some fishermen and saw them land a shark! They released it back into the ocean.

 I hope that someday the kids can appreciate the rarity of walking down an incredible beach with no people and no structures in sight! Pretty amazing in this day and age!

 Following some tracks:

 The kids were absolutely AMAZING on this trip from start to finish and loved the hike, never whined or complained once. It was very appreciated. We had planned to stop halfway and eat a picnic lunch on the beach but the wind really picked up and was whipping sand down the beach. If we had sat down we would have been sand-blasted. So we made the decision to eat a hiking lunch. The kids were like "yeah, OK...cool." And we ate an entire roaster chicken, seed crackers and hummus, carrots and fruit snacks while hiking down the beach! What a pair of rock-stars!

I was a little bit worried about navigation. Anyone who's ever hiked on a beach knows that all sand dunes pretty much look the same. The dunes in SA are HUUUUUGE and extensive and I was worried about finding the turn-off points where we would have to start looking for the trails to the huts. Dave the trail manager has it all figured out though. Anything not nailed down in SA gets taken so he's taken beach debris that no one would want and made it into make-shift markers. It reminded us of port-keys in the Harry Potter series and how they had to use something like a manky old boot so that no one would take it. On our first day the indicator that we needed to start looking for the trail to the hut was an old tire on a post about half way between the dunes and the sea:

 We started climbing. Not so easy to do in sand!

 Laughing and helping each other out:

 Once over the dune, we found a winding trail that led us over more established and vegetated dunes....

 ...and then out into farmland. My 2 guys. You can see the massive dune system behind them.

 And then we found the Milkwood Hut!

 The hut was awesome and all of our stuff was already there! There were 12 bunks with really thick mattresses, and then an outdoor firepit and an outdoor shower and toilet. The kids jumped into the shower on their own and got all de-sanded and de-sunblocked. Happy campers:

We were camping next to a game reserve and we spotted these guys checking us out:

 Game spotting:

 hogging the binocs!

 We were hungry for dinner! Salad, sausages and sweet potatoes...

And we brought our book! We are reading order of the Phoenix and I will have special memories of reading this book on this trip!

 After getting up early, driving up the coast, car shuttles, dog attachment, backtracking and lots of fresh air, we were pretty tired. We were in bed by 8:30!