The setting sun leaves the camp in its purple afterglow. A fire warms our aching joints, its sparks shining like the stars above. With new friends, we share meat from the braai, baked potatoes, juicy tomato slices, and cold beers. Conversation seems endless, but then stomachs are filled and eyelids begin to droop. In these nights of rest, I appreciate where I am and the people with me. The campfire crackles in agreement.
We have passed the midway point on the five-day-four-night traverse along the Hoerikwaggo Trail near Cape Town, South Africa. All week, we’ve followed the yellow-painted signposts that mark the path from the tip of the Cape of Good Hope to the summit of Table Mountain – seventy-five kilometers up and down the ridgy spine of the Hoerikwaggo, the “mountain in the sea.”
There is no better way to become better acquainted with the unsurpassable power of the Cape Peninsula than to scramble over its rocky steps, trudge along its sandy shores and, with every chance to rehydrate, discover new wounds. After all, hiking the Hoerikwaggo entails five days of uneven ground. It takes suffering a few blisters and a sunburnt scalp before selfish cares cease to exist in this rocky and rolling landscape of fynbos and flowers.
Part of the hiking experience is learning how to recuperate between days. On the Hoerikwaggo, the necessary rest can be found at the four tented camps along the path: Smitswinkel, Slangkop, Silvermine, and Orange Kloof. Each offers canvas huts, functioning toilets, gas stoves, and the proper atmosphere to be still after a day on the trail.
The first camp at Smitswinkel offers a well-deserved shade at the end of fifteen kilometers under the sun. Situated within a small patch of forest near the main gate of the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve, the camp gives refuge from the fierce wind off False Bay that – for better or worse – accompanied us along our coastal walk.
We woke early the next morning to the same whistling wind rippling over the canvas tent. Well-fed and rested, we bypassed the slight soreness in our legs, strapped on our packs, and started for the trailhead on day two.
Twelve kilometers down the path, the Slangkop tented camp lies comfortably nestled within a grove of white milkwoods on the Atlantic coast. As the sun sank into the sea, a warm cup of instant coffee counteracted the briskness of the nautical winds. The Slangkop Lighthouse – the tallest lighthouse in the southern hemisphere – stood silhouetted against the golden horizon, awaiting its nighttime shift.
Then, all was dark. The nearby town of Kommetjie turned off its lights, and so did we.
The third day is undoubtedly the hardest. After a morning trek along Noordhoek Beach, lunch at the summit of Chapman’s Peak, and an afternoon under an unrelenting sun, the Silvermine camp feels like a life-saving desert oasis. Weekenders from Cape Town frequent Silvermine for its nearby lake and extensive network of biking and hiking trails, but hikers on the HT can be perfectly content to put down the pack, take off the boots and open a beer with the others around the fire pit before calling it early.
Here, the silence of the other camps is replaced with conversation and laughter, feasting and festivity, ale and wine. But the lack of silence does not mean a lack of rejuvenation. With every life story told and experience shared around the campfire, I am all the more anxious to strap on the boots and follow the path onward.
The last camp at Orange Kloof sits in absolute solitude, its silence supplemented by a bubbling brook and chirping crickets. Surrounded by the vineyards at Constantia Nek and a wind-breaking forest of tall Afromontane trees, Orange Kloof is the quiet before the storm. It provides one last night under the stars before the ascent up Table Mountain.
To residents of nearby Cape Town, a tented camp along the Hoerikwaggo can serve as an escape from the mundane into the surrounding landscape. To hikers, it represents nearly the opposite – a nocturnal rest from the unpredictability of loose-pebble paths and the cape winds. But to all the same, an evening spent at either of these camps provides the necessary occasion to be sedentary and silent.
If the aimless walker walks anywhere, he walks toward the next chance to be still, to sit across the campfire from those he loves, to roll out his mat. He walks towards restoration. And however conscious of the aches and pains of today, he is fully prepared to walk again tomorrow.