Boulder hopping, sunburn and another braai

I had a lovely night's sleep, and was up at 8am. SS had found it more difficult - probably the noise of the sea - and so wanted to sleep in. So I got up, made myself some toast with Tayberry jam, some juice and some tea,

and read my book for a while watching the sea crashing and taking some photos every now and then.

I spoke to my mother which was nice. SS emerged at about 11am and I made him some bacon, toast, fruit juice and tea.
At about 12pm, we packed up the rucksacks and headed down toward the shop area to do the suspension bridge walk which I still remembered from 30+ years before.

Whilst some things have changed, the bridge is still in the same place and just as lovely.

There were a few older people struggling along with canes, and the stairs were fairly steep on the way back (SS ran up them of course), but in general it was a nice easy walk for an hour.

It was just after 1pm when we got back to the shop so we decided to do another walk. We had a quick and useless discussion with the girl at information, and decided to do the waterfall walk that I had read about.
First, we stopped on the way to stock up on Provitas and cheese, juice and water, and then walked down to behind the Oceanettes where the walk started. We walked past all the other cottages and camping sites and agreed we definitely had the best of the bunch. There were some interesting camping vans parked around as well.

It was over a kilometre just to the start of the walk, and I was thinking we really should have driven down rather than walked, particularly when we were greeted with this sign...

The trail was quite easy for the first third, with nice trails, bridges and easy slopes...

but then we emerged from the forested area into an area of giant boulders, where the only clue of which way to go was a couple of painted otter feet.

We started passing some people coming the other way, and asked them how much further. The responses varied, but they did tell us there was another giant area of boulders to get through. This literally involved climbing along rock ledges and over huge rock.

If it had been at all wet I would not have done it! A couple of cuts and scrapes from the rocks, and I was getting tired of ignoring my vertigo. There were some quite challenging places from that perspective.
Finally, we emerged at the giant pool below the waterfall.

There were a few other people there, some had been swimming. We sat down and enjoyed our little picnic, and then decided to head back quickly as the skies, which had been overcast all day, were still looking threatening. The last thing I wanted was to have to climb over those huge rocks whilst they were wet.
It seemed quicker going back (doesn't it always), and I got used to seeing SS's back disappearing into the distance.
We finally got back to the start of the trail, (nearly 7km round trip in two hours) and still had the prospect of the long walk back along the road. That seemed to take forever, and my muscles were really sore. We passed more klip dassies on the way - they look very cute until you see their teeth as they nibble the grass...

We carried on again to the shop as we needed more kindling for the braai that night. I also got a packet of Niknaks, and SS got some peri peri peanuts. After the long tough walk we also needed something special, so I got some Appletizer and SS got a ginger beer. Mmmm. Just what is needed at that point. Back to the cottage, where we collapsed happily on to the sofa on our aching legs. We had been walking almost continually for 4.5 hours, up and down and we needed to rest. We had some Niknaks then each showered, and I made some green tea so we sat by the window looking out and relaxing and chatting for a while. It was so nice to have an active day for a change! We had both got quite burnt, as you can see from this closeup...

The sun started going down, so at 6:30pm SS headed out to do his fire thing again.

I chopped up the salad stuff, and prepared the meat and peppers for the braai,

then I went out to take some photos on the rocks - the light was just beautiful.


I also fried up some mushrooms, onions and garlic to go with everything which was lovely, and we settled in for another great dinner outside.

This night we had a bottle of the Stony Brook Ghost Gum with dinner which was lovely.

After dinner I brought the plates in, and we went and sat by the braai watching the last of the wood burn as it was our last night, finishing off the bottle.

It was quite cool with the breeze off the ocean, but the fire was stunning.

Then we went back inside, finished off the Chamonix Rouge and then the Vin de Pailles and the Simonzola.
I discovered I had got quite sunburnt out on the walk today (my arms, chest and lower calves only - very attractive.
Got to bed at about midnight, with the prospect of an early start as checkout is 9am, and there is the last of the cooked breakfast items to eat by then!