Tuesday 12 April 2016
The moment I woke up I realised I had been bitten by some eager critter: still don’t know whether it was a flea or a bed bug… Everyone needs some motivation to get back on track: the Whitley’s Shelter is 1.2 miles from the track. Before we leave we chat with Betty who is also weathering some big life changes. Her friend Susan always wanted to do this trail, so when Betty mentioned it, they decided to attempt the route. We leave after the two Environmental Studies students Nicci and Jessica and JC, an aspiring writer are gone. Susan, Betty, Nicole, Jess and Dexter stay a while longer. Hiking in the fog makes it difficult to gauge distance. It’s almost noon before the sky clears. We even come across an old man hiking with an umbrella: not sure how that helps in the fog. The first part of the route traces what looks like an old road reasonably well on its way to rehabilitation with some charming streams trickling over the rocks and through the moss. The gradient is mild and we make good progress. However, sometime after lunch the white blazes swerve toward a single track. Later on it feels like we are traversing a zebra: every so often we are forced to navigate our way across a strip of rock garden garnished with moss. It becomes a long hike: 13 miles to get to the Blue Mountain Shelter. Just when we began to wonder where the shelter is, we spot a few tents on the top of a steep incline. We spot Jurgen: he spent the previous night at Low Gap. We chat with Jurgen while preparing dinner: he had been an auditor previously and even spent some time in Timor. According to his Zimbabwean colleagues it was a third world country: which says a lot. Jurgen lives in Johannesburg, but was considering a career in chess boxing before he embarked on the AT. Tonight the shelter houses three more mature ladies and Little Foot. One lady has a painful blister beneath a callous and the pain of an infection is shooting up into her foot. She has started to use some antibiotics but needs to have her foot checked. Some time later that evening a jovial guy called Mitchell starts a camp fire. He has a way of drawing in hikers and even engages “Bandana” a guy from Japan whose English is very minimalist. Bandana comments on the distance of the water sources from the camping areas. He has completed the Camino and seems to be a fast hiker. From conversations around the camp fire it seems that hikers have been testing out a few trail names on Jurgen: “Egg man” and “Spice rack” both refer to his cooking habits. Jurgen joins us after deserting the Psychology book he has been reading. Nevertheless, his reading does not seem to be far from his mind: he later on makes comments on existentialist crises. Becoming more philosophical, he decides that Mitchell should be “Zen master” due to his wise words and a slight resemblance to the Japanese gurus. Mitchell has indeed experienced a lot: he has even at one point been a law enforcer. (Maybe that’s why he is able to judge our ages fairly accurately.) Later on he stares into the fire and talks about loving each other on a universal scale. Bandana retires in the midst of all these abstractions and later on we also succumb to the lure of our tent, still hearing Jurgen musing in the background.