Fish River Day 3

The third day started at the Sulphur pools. As I said in the previous post, some of the group relaxed in the pools in the morning. Renalda and I decided to head off early and have breakfast at the first stop, but we kept ahead of the group for way too long, so we stopped in the river bed to make breakfast and wait for people to join us. Not before we saw some more fantastic scenery and some wild horses!!

Tons of dead still water in the river, reflecting the cliffs in the morning

The illusive wild horses apparently descended from German occupation forces

This is what a real pothole should look like

  We were able to cook before everyone arrived and were visited by some baboons while waiting. When Cath, the doctor joined us she experimented with our “Staal drupple” home remedy for blisters… it was apparently agony! I fined Ian for leaving some oats-so-easy packets at the camp site.

Another thing I should mention is that I’d planned to hike most of the river in my Vibram 5 Fingers, but I carried 1.6kg worth of boots in case! I have a pair of Bakila LS’s and they were awesome. Mostly excellent grip and no blisters, it gives an added dimension to the hike. I had done a significant amount of training with them and my feet were tough enough. Please don’t just go and hike in them, rather ease into barefoot hiking. You get to feel the terrain underfoot, sand is soft, sharp stones poke you, your feet curl around round stones. After a day of walking it feels like your feet are tired, but the next morning they are fine again. Sand did bother me a bit, and I wore my boots one of the days because I got the Vibrams wet. But after a while the sand didn’t bother me much, I just stopped and emptied them.

Baboon prints

Ian doing pushups for his fine

At this stage some of the group, including us, were worried about getting to the end on time, because it seemed like we were dawdling a bit, so we pushed really hard that day. With two people struggling bad boots and most people having some blisters we were exhausted at the end of the day, but found a fantastic campsite in between a bunch of wind breaking trees. 

We had our dehydrated supper, and watched in amazement as Cath brought out ingredients for a fantastic Thai curry wrap meal! And Liquorice alsorts dessert.  

I guess the next primal rule we can mention is to move a lot, but slowly. What could be better than hiking to live up to this primal rule, but I’ve realised I have 5 posts to talk about Mark Sisson’s 10 primal rules, so I’ll throw in, getting some sunlight everyday as another rule. Unfortunately in my daily life it is very difficult to get this right. Office life does not allow....I'd rather be hiking.