Day 16: George - Mossel Bay

Total Distance Covered: 1,631 km
Distance Remaining: 379 km

It’s a great day…Ikumi is back! Her bus arrived in George this morning and we picked her up and hit the road. She’d worn her hiking outfit on the 17-hour bus ride, so she was ready to hit the pavement the moment she arrived. Words can’t express how happy we are to have her back…it just hasn’t been the same the last five days without her!

To celebrate Ikumi’s return…we decided to splurge and open up the jar of mayonnaise! For two weeks we’ve eaten tuna out of the can everyday without anything but a little salt and pepper to enhance the taste (which woefully is NOT enough). Without proper refrigeration we’ve been unable to open the mayo for fear that it would go bad. So, to celebrate her homecoming, we threw caution to the wind and treated ourselves with a can of warm tuna AND MAYO!

Kelly was absolutely amazing today. Hiking for two hours straight, Kelly covered 19 km (on the best of days, at our fastest, we average just over 16km in 2 hours). Ruan and Keegan tried jogging three times to keep up with her walking pace, but couldn’t handle it and finally had to give up (Ryan did a much better job of keeping pace with her today). By the time Kelly reached the support vehicle waiting for them, the rest of the hikers were almost 2 km behind her. Despite the longer legs on the guys, no one could keep up with her. Way to go Kels!

We finished up early today and hit the beach to hike our last 5km...a nice treat at the end of a long day. The beach was beautiful, but a bit dangerous. There were thousands of jellyfish close to the shoreline and many were washing up onto the beach. They look like little jelly bubbles with a long bright blue jelly string. In Afrikaans, they’re called Blou Blasies (Blue Blisters)…and if you make the mistake of stepping on one of them on the beach or have the misfortune of swimming into one in the ocean, a blister would be the least of your worries as the searing pain of the blasie is debilitating for days. So, while it was fun to hike on the gorgeous beach, we had to spend most of the time staring at our feet (to make sure we didn’t take a wrong step) and couldn’t actually enjoy the view of the ocean breaking on the sands or the gorgeous mountains in the distance. We’re all exceptionally sore and injuries are beginning to accumulate, so we can’t afford to lose a hiker to, of all things, a jellyfish sting.

Kate & Guy (and their great kids) were our hosts for the evening in Mossel Bay. Quite thankfully, Kate is a pharmacist. Ryan’s been nursing the massive blisters he developed at the start of the hike and Kelly has been struggling with several small, but very painful blisters on her feet over the last few weeks.

A friend of Kate’s is a doctor who quite graciously offered to treat the blisters. The process, however, turned out to be quite disgusting and immensely painful (but hopefully effective). The liquid is drained from the blister with a syringe and then surgical spirits (alcohol) is injected in its place, causing the most immense pain for about 10 minutes. Jacob had to hold onto Kelly through the painful ordeal as Ruan rubbed her back and patted her leg (Keegan took the semi-sadistic photos of the ordeal so that we could save these beautiful memories for posterity…and so we can share them with you all). Ryan was next to be treated and after the blister treatment found out he had sand under the skin of his heal. So, without warning, the doctor literally ripped the skin off his heal and poured alcohol over it in order to prevent infection. The flesh of the heal being pealed off was, without question, the most painful looking thing we’d ever seen in our lives. It showed a lot of strength and character for Ryan to remain positive and not get upset through the whole ordeal. We can only hope it will speed up the healing process and he and Kelly will be able to hike through the pain over the next few days.