YEP 12 Africa Expedition – Day 4

Blog written by Kate and Laura

The day began with a bit of a surprise – instead of walking first thing, we went to a salt spring to soothe our aching muscles. After driving back past our campsite from last night, we arrived at the spring. The murky, green water was luckily warmer than we expected as shivering, we stripped off and hopped in. The high salt content of the water made the water especially buoyant, and also left our faces and hair white with salt! We kept Dima happy by making shapes in the water.

After showers (yay!) we began hiking again. Starting after lunch, it was only a short walk, 20km, along the coast where we saw our first ship wreck of the skeleton coast and walked past yet another endlessly long and empty campsite! Mike told us stories of his adventures and we learnt more about the desert, landscape and vegetation we passed. It was after dark before we reached the campsite and the night was clear for a change (no fog) so we saw our first sunset and the Southern Cross. We eventually arrived at the campsite where it was blowing a gale, so after putting packs into the tents to hold them up, we built a sand wall to break the wind a little. We didn’t blow away, but it was a pretty noisy night!