Hiking the Shipwreck Trail.... day 3

Day 3: Treehouses to the 3 Sisters - 7km
On day 3 we woke up early to the loudest but most beautiful birdsong we'd ever heard. What a nice way to wake up! We fired up the camp stove and had some eggs and sausages.

 And then just spent some time enjoying the treehouses!

 Closer inspection of the first treehouse revealed that it's built in a tree that's almost entirely fallen over with exposed roots and everything. This treehouse building crew is CRAZY!

 Try to spot the kids in this pic and you can see how far up the treehouse deck is!

 Gangplank to the main deck held up with parachute cord. Yikes!

 Kickin' it in the trees:

 Here's a shot of the little bunk houses that were up on the platforms. They were very comfortable!

 Ted LOVED going up and down the back entrance ladder. I think just to make me nervous. "Look Ma! No hands!"

 Finally we got underway and hiked back along the trail we had come in on until we hit the split that would take us to the next hut, the 3 sisters!

 This took us way up into the hills...

 ...over an electric fence....

 ...and across some open farmland. Beautiful!

 The 3 sisters hut was our least favorite of the trip, but it was only 1.5 km's from the 3 Sisters Rock Formations on the beach. We had lunch at the hut and then trekked out to see them.

 The beach was incredible, scenic, and of course totally void of people!

 The waves were crashing like mad, but we found some protected rock pools.

 Sasha found this little rock formation that looks like a hippo coming out of the water. She couldn't wait to hike up onto that next big rock formation.

 A look back at the first sister:

 High up on Sister #2:

 Meanwhile this guy was just thrilled to have his own bag of trail mix all to himself. He never changes....

We stood for a while and watched some really big waves roll in and crash against the rocks.

 Then we hiked back down off the other side:

 The kids found this cool bridge:

 And we went under it to check it out. It turned out to be this perfect little pocket beach with this wonderful view! We plopped down in the sand to relax for a bit...

 The tide was coming in and Jeff said we would go when the small round pool right below Sasha in the picture filled up. We had a chill time just watching the waves come in, relaxing, and trying to predict which wave would finally flood the little pool.

 Finally it was time to head back to the hut.

 Beautiful afternoon and really cool dunes!

 We set dinner up around the braai pit where we had a gorgeous view looking out over the ocean in the distance. Dinner was build your own mexican sweet potato. The food you can bring on a slack-packing trip is pretty rad. I could get used to cold drinks and luxury food on every camping trip!

 After dinner we roasted marshmallows, made S'mores and watched the first stars appear. And with the stars came tons of BATS! They were attracted to our fire and kept swooping low right down over us. We told stories and watched the bats until sleepiness dragged us down to the hut. Another great day!