Washer, Candice, Rikki + 2 other travellers

The drive to Port St Johns through the hilly and misty rural landscape of the Eastern Cape is exciting and beautiful enough to entice one to explore further the surrounding forests and hills. Having limited time and knowledge of the area we decided to join an organised hike with Rikki, the local field guide who was highly recommended to us by a couple of travelers we met in Prince Albert, a week or so earlier.

Rikki’s knowledge of the area and its fauna and flora is excellent. The fact that he hikes barefoot and is continuously smoking roll ups from his ‘special’ stash doesn’t detract from his entertaining and highly imformative guiding style. In fact his roll ups are pretty dam good.

Starting early in the morning we had to take great care on our way up to Eagle’s Nest not to disturb the numerous spiders’ nests built overnight by the fascinating array of spiders in the area. Stopping to watch a spider spin its intricate web was both intoxicating and facinating.
The trees also perform many miracles to survive in this area and often help each other out over a period of time. A tree may grow its roots around a falling tree to stabilize it – over a few years this method proves very effective – “the trees are thinking” Rikki likes to say. The knob tree was my personal favourite with hundreds of knobs growing all over their respective trees to protect against tree predators.

We reached Eagle’s Nest with its great views over the bustling small town, the adjacent clean white beaches and the river mouth where the Umzimvubu River reaches the Indian Ocean. We were also lucky enough to see a large buzzard flying majestically past at eye level.

We continued our walk up and down hills, through tropical forests and insect riddled water spots. It was at one such stop that Ricky warned us about ticks and how tick bite fever was to be avoided at all cost if we could help it. I thought I was all clear but did come down with a suspected bout of tick bite fever about 10 days later.

After many hours of traversing cliff edges, watching insects go about their daily chores and having reached the air strip built on top of one such hill (I’d rather risk the potholed roads then land on this dodgy airstrip), we finally descended, arriving at the bottom very hungry – so we snacked on dry mielies braaied and sold on the side of the road – delicious… I think.

We then boarded our waiting canoes and took a leisurely paddle close to the river mouth and ended our ten hour day – tired but happy.

A taste of the beautiful Transkei is what we got but it left us longing for more…next time.

cheers