I sleep well in the beautiful dorm. We rise when we rise - deciding to take a very short day today and only needing to get to Coffee Bay that night which is 10km away. Going to Mdumbi was high up on all of our lists and Damo and Fred are keen to see what the backpackers has on offer.
I had been talking about the Mdumbi breakfast wraps for most of the run at this point. We order one each and wait excitedly. When the food arrives we are short one breakfast wrap but up one omelette. I opt for the latter seeing that I’ve had my fair share of breakfast wraps here. After devouring a delicious breakfast Damo wants more - oh that man can eat. I suggest we share a breakfast wrap. The actual order of events are a little hazy here but the important point is that we each end up eating two and a half breakfast wraps after they kitchen realise their mistake and make up for it.
I find a small bird walking around on the grass in a daze. I take it upon myself to try and give it some life with some sugar water. It is pretty content sitting on my finger and sipping some water from time to time. I take it to a tree and it hops on - looking me in the eye with a look that is either “thank you” or something that is more inline with it accepting fate.
The ITB pains of yesterday had been on my mind yesterday. I’ve only ever really rested when the one on my right began to get irritated a few months back, so the thought of running for four more days didn’t seem like a good one. I had thought of a few ways to give it a try and settled on giving the 10km stretch to Coffee Bay a try using my UTD Power Hiking stride. If I got to Coffee Bay and it wasn’t doing well then I would be able to easily get a lift back out to Port St Johns and let the other two carry on without me. I resolved not to think too much about the future and rather deal with each moment as it arises. Fred gives me a massage in the common room which is a luxury.
This section of the coast is very familiar to me. I let Fred and Damo fall behind me as they admire the views and smaller details of life while I powerhike my way down the beach, taking each step as an inquisition into the functioning of my body. The beach is flat and the wind behind us, sand jostles around our ankles in a form emanating the movements of a shoal of fish.
All the dials and gauges of my body are reading stable. A sharp bite occasionally nips the outside of my knee to tell me that I’m flexing my knee past the point of comfort. I’ve begun really listening to the pain and trying to decipher the information in it. There is definitely a spectrum of pain transmitting messages of: stop!, you’re going slightly too hard, things are stable but please don’t push it and warm sensations of healing.
I get to the river crossing a few minutes ahead of the other two and survey the scene. Fred is quite intimidated by the river crossings, and has done a remarkably good job in finding us boats when the water pauses our relentless forward progression. I whistle out across the water and some heads appear behind a hill. We make some crude hand signals to each other and someone stirs on the opposite bank. Damo arrives and asks if someone is going to help us across - I tell him that I had no idea what the hand signals meant but I have either called a boat or declared war on the opposite bank.
A boat arrives and we all climb in - no wars in sight. We have a brief conversation with the driver and he expertly navigates the boat into the shallows for us. The R20 notes comes in hand here, we wave goodbye and head off along the CCC skirting the coastal hills.
We’re in no rush today and, as Damo reminds us, he’s carrying a quart of Black Label in his bag. We find a spot on the hill, overlooking the sweeping beach back towards the coast that we’ve come through. The beer is lukewarm and rather unpleasant, the last third is given to the grass in thanks.
We traverse the tops of the hills for some time, the ocean views expanding out underneath us. The path takes us inland into a village, the same village with a few dogs that I had a standoff with a couple weeks earlier. We walk through the houses, most of them quiet until we arrive at the house with the dogs. Damo sits down and they circle him - anxious to be petted.
As we begin descending towards coffee bay we spot something in the distance. A sight out of place for this part of the world. Someone swinging a gold club on a hillside. We take a moment to stare in disbelief before trekking down towards the woman who is practicing her swing.
As we arrive at the hut the scene gets even more obscure. The gold player is covered in tattoos, piercings and a hiphop style outfit. She’s got a silver tooth and a cheeky smile, she greets us warmly and we engage in a conversation that holds as much absurdity as we had expected.
Her partner comes out of the house and the two of them tell us a story of how they left Joburg to move here seven months ago. We aren’t really able to ask any juicy questions, but pick up on strands of deeper stories as to their previous lives. Their current life is quite a contrast it seems - most of their time being occupied with building and enjoying their new home.
They both tell us that Mapuzi caves that Mandela hid out in for some time. They urge us to go back a few hundred meters and find some children who could show us the way. We take their advice and head off back up the hill, a little in disbelief.
True to their word, some children are more than happy to show us the path in exchange for a few Energade gummy sweets. As we hit the edge of the cliffs the path narrows and snakes its way down a near vertical descent. I opt to give my leg a rest rather than subject it to a terrain that would almost definitely cause some “STOP!” signals to come from my knee. I sit on the grassy hillside and reflect on the day. Damo and Fred come back a short while later with the unfortunate news that the tide was too high to get to the caves.
We retrace our steps and find the couple again. We get locked into a deeper conversation that bounces from losing gold balls in the long grass to the people that they have met in these hills. Looking at the two of them they kind of don’t appear out of place here - the Transkei can hold so many different faces and experiences. Their two lapdogs have come to live here two and have to be constantly deterred from humping each other while we talk.
We wave goodbye and head off to Coffee Bay. There is a small river crossing, too small for a boat. Fred knuckles up and gets completely naked and wades through the waist deep water. Damo cruises through without taking off a shoe. I opt for the median and remove my shoes and socks.
After a grinding jeep track we get our first glimpse of the town before dropping down into it. A woman accompanies us as she’s headed our way too. At the door of the backpackers I spot Damien. Damien was someone I met in Mdumbi a while back, he was walking the whole coast from Mozambique to Namibia with Leanne and Ian promoting their marijuana infused soothing rub. The trio were quite a set of characters, and I sensed a little unease in the group. Seeing Damien here alone meant that they seemed to have split up.
He is volunteering at the backpackers and helping them restore it from a state of neglect and disrepair after many years of it being abandoned. He urges us to come with him and check out the dormitory that he assures us is good enough to sleep in. We whack our way through the jungle that is the garden, avoiding glass and pieces of rusted metal. The dorm is half completed and I have to unfortunately tell a white lie that I had already made a booking at the neighbouring backpackers to excuse us. He’s incredibly sweet and invites us around whenever we would like.
Upon arriving at The Coffee Shack we’re greeted with a complementary welcome drink in the bar. I opt for an Appletiser instead of a beer this time after the morning’s lukewarm Black Label still haunts me. We have dorm to ourselves and enjoy a shower. We go to the bar for another drink and meet Zameka who is the sassiest person this side of Constantia. She is the head of the bar and restaurant and not afraid to say it like it is. She challenges us to a pool game later.
Dinner arrives, well, the starter arrives. I take the first bite of the most incredible soup I’ve ever eaten and am enthralled. It comes with Xhosa bread and the table falls silent. Marcelo and Martha are at the table with us, travellers from Italy. They have a rather strange relationship that is quite one sided with a hint of dominance. The main course is fantastic too but even something that I can remember in the shadow of the soup. A pretty iconic young surf instructor picks his way around the meal claiming “I don’t eat vegetables”.
A pool game commences and Damo loses again, and again. Fred is on fire and Zameka challenges us to a doubles game. I opt to be on Zameka’s team and she asks me to break. I eagerly observe her pool technique: hit the white ball as hard as physically possible. She sends the white ball airborne a couple of times, but her approach brings success a few times purely due to the fact that the balls have so much speed that they bounce off at least three sides of the table; occasionally sinking balls she never even glanced at.
Tomorrow is set to be another long day. Today was brilliant. I’m proud of myself for managing to get to a point that I think I’m able to full enjoy the rest of the trip despite the twinges in the knee.