In Namibia,
there are three school holidays – four weeks in April/May, one week in August
and 6 weeks in December/January. Most of
the time, PCVs use these breaks as an opportunity to travel around Namibia and
southern Africa; Swakopmund (on the coast), Cape Town, Victoria Falls, Malawi
and Mozambique are all popular destinations.
I’ve done my fair share of traveling, so this past April/May, I decided
to keep it local and avoid the typical tourist traps. Instead, I answered the invitation to do two
hiking trips – Naukluft and Fish River Canyon, both national parks. Quite a non-traditional holiday, but it
sounded like an interesting adventure so I was game.
Our Fish River Canyon hiking group
Almost
immediately, I realized the irony of my decision to go on two hiking trips. First,
I’d never hiked before. Despite the
abundance of (probably beautiful and well-groomed) hiking trails in Wisconsin,
and America in general, I’d never hiked before.
It’s a bit like deciding to do a marathon when one’s never run
before. Second, I despised hiking-type
activities in my previous life in America.
In college, I was once dragged along on a walk through the woods in some
of central Wisconsin’s public hunting land.
At the time, I thought that was the most boring, most pointless two
hours I’d ever spent in my life.
Thinking back, the longest “hike” I’d ever been on was probably the time
I’d begrudgingly followed my mom up some large hill to a lookout point
somewhere out West.
But hiking
it was…and I was not going to be caught with my pants down, either. In the months leading up to the holiday, I
tried to jog several times a week so I’d be in peak physical condition. On a trip to Windhoek, I enlisted the help of
the trip leader, an experienced hiker, to assist me in picking out some hiking
boots. I knew I had to break the boots
in, but I had difficulty finding the opportunity. Due to some small sliver of latent fashion
sense, I couldn’t bring myself to wear the black monstrosities to school with
my flowing hippie skirts. Nor did I like
wearing them with jeans – or really at all.
Subconsciously, they reminded me of high school and the aptly named “shitkickers”
that kids used to wear. Finally,
however, I managed to get in an 18 km walk that gave me two nice blisters on
the balls of my feet. I felt satisfied. I was prepared.
It’s
walking, not mountain climbing, I thought, how hard can it be? But I
was wrong. Naukluft is 7 days and 120
kilometers (74.5 miles) of open plains, rolling hills, river beds, canyons, cliffs and
mountains; quite different than the flat expanses of Owamboland where I’d done
my pre-hike preparation. Following the
advice of a friend, and experienced hiker, I packed as light as possible –
minimal clothing, no books, no journals, no playing cards, no hairbrush, no
perfume – nothing but the necessities. But
those extra pounds, no matter how small, plus changing topography still add
extra pressure to a hiker’s most valuable asset – her feet.
That trail blaze is not confusing...not at all!
Then came
the first day – 12 kilometers (7.4 miles) spent winding around the sides of huge
hills. By the time the day was over, I
wondered if my lilt to the right, to avoid tumbling to my death off the side of
the mountain, would be permanent. These
hiking trails were rugged, just as I imagined African hiking trails would be: sometimes
steep, sometimes winding; uneven, with obtruding rocks strewn about; poorly
marked; simple dirt paths, probably unchanged from the time when early
explorers first walked them. But I survived. Despite the two massive blisters that had
formed on my feet, I felt good.
And then
came day two. It’s one thing to walk
with a blister while it’s forming, but it’s another ballgame to walk with two
raw, quarter-sized wounds on your feet.
Through a riverbed. For 12
kilometers (7.4 miles). And then to realize that,
the next day, you have to walk right back up the canyon you just walked
down. No, seriously. You go down the canyon, with its river rocks,
boulders and chains (for near-vertical ascents and descents), and then go right
back up it the next day. It was on day
two that I started to feel panicked. I
was 24 kilometers (14.9 mils) away from civilization and I now had FOUR huge blisters on my
feet that stung with every single step.
The next morning I was told that I’d been moaning in my sleep, probably
because I could still feel the open wounds stinging, even without shoes to rub
against them.
As the days
went on, I got better at wrapping my blisters, but I soon came to realize that
I was quickly running out of gauze and tape.
As we walked, I’d often joke about how a helicopter was coming to rescue
me. Or that I was going back to base
camp with the park worker who’d come to the shelter to drop more food for us on
day four. I was always at the back of
the pack because I simply couldn’t go any faster. Every single step, on flat ground or steep
hillside, was painful. As we moved
along, I often came close to tears – out of pain, out of frustration, out of
anxiety. I wanted to scream. I wanted to stop.
And then on
day four, the stars aligned. At about
1:00, after 14 kilometers of trail (8.7 miles), we ran into a park worker just a few
hundred meters from the shelter. If I
wanted to go back, it had to be now.
Two of four blisters (3 months later)
A few hours
later, I was back at the base camp. That
night, I slept alone in the hiker’s house.
Fourteen beds and just one occupant.
I had no headlamp (dead batteries), no matches (left them with the
others), no cell phone (no reception), no iPod (batteries died), and no book (I
packed light, remember?). I managed to
scrounge up a piece of paper with one blank side and wrote a letter in the
tiniest handwriting imaginable. I worked
on some friendship bracelets. And I
waited. Until morning. When I waited again. Just after sunrise, I was already sitting patiently by the
park entrance, hoping some tourist heading to Windhoek would have sympathy on
me and give me a ride. And lady luck
struck again. At noon, I got in the only
vehicle going east that day; two German brothers dropped me in the tiny, dusty
outpost of Reitoog, the site of another PCV, Caitlin, whose house keys I had.
The next 3 days was just me, some books, peanut butter and bread, chocolate pudding and
my raw bloody feet. By the time of the
rest of the group arrived on Sunday, I was tipping dangerously close to
insanity. Even for an introvert like me,
72 hours is a long time to be alone with your thoughts – no TV, no radio, no
cell phone, no iPod, no other humans (which is really my fault because I locked
myself in the house, but I couldn’t go very far hobbling around like an
arthritic centenarian anyways).
In the end,
calling it quits was the best decision I could’ve made. As my friend Ben told me, making the decision
to turn back when conditions get too difficult takes more courage than pushing
forward (that’s why so many people die on Everest). And I never would’ve made it through the 25
kilometers (15.5 miles) on the last day. No way
Jose! Obviously, I wanted to finish, but
I wanted to enjoy my vacation, not
just survive it. I didn’t let pride trump pragmatism. Admitting defeat and bowing out gracefully is not
easy (just ask Brett Favre), but it’s a necessary part of life; it allows us to
move on to bigger and better things.
Which is just what I did…Fish River Canyon.
The extra
few days of rest allowed my feet to heal to a tolerable level, and then it was
off on another 4 day, 85 kilometer (52.8 mile) hike through the world’s second largest
canyon. After Naukluft, Fish River
seemed like a breeze! Minus the long,
precarious descent into the canyon (which cost me seven toenails), it was
fairly pain free. The most challenge
moments were the river crossings (there’s nothing more demoralizing than
getting ¾ of the way across a 15 meter-wide river only to slide off a slippery,
underwater rock and feel your boots fill with river water), and the time we got
lost (in an attempt to take a shortcut we ended up wandering through the arid
hillside without water for 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) until we got to the edge of the park
and turned around, following a dry riverbed that finally led us back to the
river/trail. Needless to say, that “shortcut”
did not save us any time).
As the doctor put best, "traumatic toenail loss"
Though it
was neither glamorous nor relaxing, my April holiday was the most meaningful
vacation I’ve ever taken. By golly, did
I learn a lot – about hiking, of course, but also about pain, perseverance and
failure. Will I hike again? You betcha!
Yes, it’s challenging and exhausting, but a day on the beach can never
compete with putting supplies on your back and heading out into the wilderness –
rising with the sun and sleeping under the Milky Way, building fires and
sharing stories with friends.
