Marsh Multinational Hiked the Fish River Canyon

A lie in today – 6am. Well a 6am wake up for those of us who slept, unlike Martin who had drawn the short straw and ended up on the sofa for a second sleepless night on the trot. Tempers very short this morning.

As we hung around waiting for the off, Kevin got more and more excited while Jen got more and more grumpy. At 7, we climbed into a pretty ropey-looking white minivan for the 1.5 hour transfer to the start of the hike, at the north end of the canyon. Gavin and Martin made straight for the naughty seats at the back of the bus, swiftly joined by Jen. Kevin had noticed that most of the other seats were taken by young South African women so decided to hold court up front, perched on a spare tire.

While the back row were trying to mentally prepare for the day ahead and/or nap, Kevin launched into the usual Walker repertoire of bombastic stories.. 90% of which the rest of us had heard told at least 5 times, with embellishments being added each time.. the 10% actually being a story of Martin’s which he has now adopted as his own. One of the young ladies’ husbands was overheard to mutter in Afrikaans, “What utter bullshit”, at a particularly spicy part of one of the tales.

He was mercifully cut off when we finally arrived at some huts and stopped. This was where our medical forms would be checked – we’d needed to have certified that we were fit enough to do the walk, had no abnormalities of the skeleton or limbs, that there was no sugar in our urine etc… our certs had been duly signed by Dr Goodluck Jonathan from Nairobi…

In addition, there were 3 lots of indemnity forms per person which Kevin took it up on himself to sign for all of us, muttering about a lot of fuss about nothing.

It was at this point that we overheard a fellow hiker talking to someone official looking about the fact that the first drinkable water was at the 20km mark.. “No problem!” said Kevin, “We’ll absolutely get there by this evening……… we’d better just buy a couple of bottles of water, you know, just in case…”

After QUITE a lot of hanging about and a pretty suspect cup of coffee we piled back into our minivan for the last bumpy 20 minutes to the official canyon viewing spot and, at last, the start of the hike!!

We had a flapjack for the road, said our goodbyes to the support crew (who were off to have a lovely time camping by a river), hauled on our backpacks and trotted over to where the trail began.

This is probably a good point to introduce you to the rest of the gang. 20 people are allowed a permit to go into the canyon each day and our party made up 9 of them. Kevin’s second cousin, Charlie, joined us with two of his friends from school… bringing the average age of the group down significantly. Then the two at the other end are family friends of Kevin’s (both members of the South African National Sea Rescue Institute and very practical – they were in charge of the first aid kit!). Last but by absolutely no means least is Gavin, Martin’s best friend and resident water purifier / supplier of pen knives, lip balm, blister plasters, snacks..

At this point it would be fair to say that we were all pretty excited about what lay ahead. For Martin Pugh, this lasted until he looked over the edge of the cliff.

Suddenly all the medical and indemnity forms made sense.

The path descended straight downwards at approximately a 60 degree angle, with only a rather flimsy looking chain standing between you and oblivion. The videos, I’m afraid, just do not do it justice.

Gavin and the young guns shot off down the slope ahead of us (clearly their bags weren’t heavy enough), excited to be getting on with the walk. Martin followed, then Jen, and Kevin brought up the rear with Shannen and Chris.

When the vertigo hit, combined with the weight of a 70L backpack, Martin swiftly realised he had been a bit hasty and sat down. He then proceeded to do the next 50 metres on his bottom. Apparently it took him only 10 of these metres to realise he’d made a terrible, terrible mistake in agreeing to do the hike, but there was nothing for it, the support crew and cars had left us, Jen was hot on his heels.. 10m down, 92km to go.. he just had to get on with it.

“Jen, do you want to go ahead of me”, this was an instruction, not a suggestion. Jen went on ahead.

The trail alternated between big rocks and slippy shingle underfoot and seemed to follow the path of least resistance – i.e. straight downhill. It was the sort of terrain that you either had to travel across really fast or REALLY slowly. Jen opted for option 1, Martin and Kevin for option 2.

At this point, Jen was having really quite a jolly time. Enjoying the scenery (this didn’t last) and the peace & quiet. The same could not be said for the party bringing up the rear. Martin’s knee had checked out pretty rapidly and he was bleeding from scrapes on his calves. Kevin had already witnessed him almost falling straight off the mountain twice and this had given him a big fright. It was the first time that he realised what a big responsibility he had to the group – and that Sarah would kill him if he didn’t bring Martin out in one piece.

He wondered why on earth Martin hadn’t brought a pole with him (!!) and pondered fashioning some sort of leash but quickly realised the only item he could practically do this with was his PJ bottoms and he was fairly sure Martin wouldn’t be on board with that.

It took us all varying amounts of time to descend the 500m to the bottom of the canyon but it was not quick. The sun got higher and higher in the sky until at midday it was 32 degrees c. As you can imagine, this didn’t help matters.

When you finished the rocky descent we arrived on the deep sand, which would plague us for the next 5 days, and discovered a murky pond – the first of many which we would be drinking from on the hike.

By the time Martin, Kevin, Shannen and Chris got to the bottom the others had been there for over an hour. The boys had been for a swim and then had put some reggae on and were sunbathing topless (‘Costa del Fish’). Martin staggered into some shade below a rock and collapsed.

It was decided it was lunchtime.

The kitchen was rapidly set up on the flattest rock we could find.. tea was made (our first taste of dehydrated milk.. deeelicious) and then Kevin whipped up our first lunch of the hike – his answer to a Waldorf Salad, consisting of mayonnaise, apple, tinned tuna and raisins, on a cracker. We were a long way from the Wine Library.

When we’d all regained some strength, we were ready to set off again. Kevin then made the mistake of announcing to the group that this was where the 92km of the hike actually started.. not at the start of the trail. This was met with stony silence. We set off again.

The afternoon was incredibly tough. Most of the group went on ahead to find somewhere to camp for the night. Martin, Kevin and Jen steadily followed but the beating sun + unfamiliar terrain was punishing. Our rucksacks got heavier and heavier as the sweat trickled down our backs and dehydration set in!

We got through our clean water rations very fast and had to move onto the pond water, jazzed up with either Robinsons Apple & Blackcurrant or ‘Game’, a South African orange-flavoured isotonic powder which became more valuable to us than platinum as the days went on. We were all having to share a water bottle but germs couldn’t be further from our minds (until day 2 when Kevin and Martin realised that Jen had also shared her summer cold with them..).

As we got more and more tired, each corner we went around we were desperately hoping to find the others but sand & pebbles turned to big boulders which turned to MASSIVE boulders, and they were nowhere to be found.

This was the first time we heard Kevin’s catchphrase of the trip, “There must be suffering!“…

Around 4pm we stopped in the shade for about the 10th time and Jen looked at her Garmin, “Oh God, we’ve only done nine and a half thousand steps today”. Martin looked like he was going to cry, “NINE AND A HALF THOUSAND STEPS! That’s less than a standard day in the office!”.

We eventually found the camp the others had selected, severely dehydrated but happy – happy that is until Gavin got his map out and *helpfully* piped up that we had only actually covered 3 kilometres that afternoon and therefore still had 89 to go.

The camping spot they’d selected seemed to be a good one, next to another algae-filled pond, with a solid kitchen rock and some shelter in the form of a gulley. A beautiful Cape Malay chicken curry was for supper, cooked and vacuum sealed by Andrew Walker’s fair hand, and THERE WAS RED WINE (Chateau le box).

Kevin produced a bar of soap and three very sweaty insurance brokers got in the pond (fully clothed) for a wash. Lots of ‘don’t drop the soap’ gags ensued and by the end I’m not sure we were any cleaner than we were when we went in. We then donned our night-time attire of pyjama bottoms & slippers (who knew that tartan pyjama bottoms & moccasins, or navy blue Fila slip-ons in Martin’s case, would be such an essential in the Namib outback) and we were ready to settle in for the evening.

It was at this point that Chris proudly produced a metal spade which he speared into the sand in the middle of the encampent… “This is the sh*t shovel. There are only two rules – 1. you must dig a deep hole for your sh*t, 2. you must not get the shovel ANYWHERE near said sh*t. That is all.“

Both Martin and Jen quietly resolved to absolutely not go near the shovel for the next four days (Not too problematic, it turned out, given how few of our 5-a-day we were getting).

After a good feed we were all feeling more positive. At 6.15pm it was suddenly pitch black and the stars came out. You’ve never seen a night sky like it, it felt like you could reach out and touch the Milky Way. Our trusty guide Kevin exclaimed, “Look at that bright star over there, it’s Saturn”. It was not Saturn.

It’s a bit of a funny feeling for city or suburb dwellers, suddenly realising you are in the middle of a canyon, in the middle of Africa, basically on your own, in the darkness. Everyone got into their sleeping bags fairly rapidly. Martin had had a rough few days, he managed to spot two shooting stars and then descended into crescendoes of snores.

Kevin was absolutely not ready for bed and persuaded Jen into a toot of whisky, a cheroot and some star gazing. Shortly she decided that she too would like to go to bed. Kevin, however, was so relaxed he fell asleep topless on the sand with his unfinished whisky in one hand and half smoked cigarillo in the other.

Everything was going well. Too well.

Three of the KEY bits of intel that Kevin had told the group about ‘The Fish’ (as he refers to it) is that there is no wind, there is no rain but that it gets very cold at night.

That first night it was hot, really hot. Not ideal for those of us who had been given a -5ºC sleeping bag for Christmas (Jen) or for those of us who wanted to zip themselves fully into their sleeping bag to stop the scorpions and snakes getting in (also Jen).

Then, in the middle of the night, the wind picked up and a sandstorm descended on our little gulley. Not ideal for Kevin who had passed out half naked nor for Jen who had to get up 10 times in the night to go for a wee…

I don’t know what we were expecting really, but it was not a good night.