We had a casual start to the day and headed off mid morning, the aim being to catch the incoming tide to help carry us up the river. After a brief lunch stop in the town, we were in our kayaks and heading up the Kowie. The sky was blue, the sun was out and the tide was in our favour. But the wind had determined to make life interesting. As we paddled our way around the long sweeping curves of the river we would find first the wind behind us, pushing us through smooth waters, and then in our faces whipping up the water into small breaking waves that soaked us and made progress slow. Even the steep sided river valley, tree covered and Amazon like, afforded little protection from the strong wind.
We journeyed up river for some five miles, feeling like we were in the middle of nowhere, until we reached the local nature reserve. It’s a simple and rustic place with fire pits near the river and bunk bed accommodation on covered platforms on the hillside. Their open fronts offer great views back along the river although they hold promise of a cold night's sleep to come. There is no electricity and some may prefer the word 'basic' to 'rustic' but dinner cooked on an open fire under starlight holds a special charm that more than compensates for a lack of luxuries. We ate poike, a one pot South African stew, and drank beer while we warmed ourselves around the fire, mostly lost in thought and just staring into the flames.
We did have two visitors during the evening. Our first was a female ostrich, strutting inquisitively and determined to try and taste anything we took our eye off while the poike was being prepared. Our second, later in the evening was the resident ranger, a hard accented Afrikaans. He had come round earlier to sort some administration and we had all thought him high owing to his strange manner. He then turned up later with some drinks and regaled us with unusual requests and comments, none of which did anything to disabuse us of his strangeness or the feeling that we were in one of those horror movies where American students camping in remote locations all get slaughtered by a resident maniac. It wasn’t until he told us of being head butted by a giraffe (this is how male giraffes assert their dominance) and the subsequent hospitalisation that the possible reality dawned upon us.
The night wore on and our ranger departed. We chatted, we watched the stars, we watched the flames and we eventually drifted off up the hill to our platform and to our beds.
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