Day 4: a day of drought and rain

Thanks to our bear friends, we didn’t sleep much last night. But we didn’t feel like staying here for much longer. So let’s start packing our bags.

We use bear resistant bags that wrap around the trunk of a tree, instead of the traditional food bag that swings over a branch. So the first thing we did this morning was check our food bags. To our surprise, they were intact. Not a single footprint near them.

There were no toilets here, so I had to dig my first cat hole. For my petty way of marking my territory, I dug it right in the bear tracks, a little further down the campsite. That will show them! … I don’t know.

We had breakfast and I tried grits instead of regular oatmeal. But I won’t do that again! I’m not a big fan.

The first part of the trail was quite rocky and had a lot of ups and downs, which were quite hard on my feet.

Dealing with drought

Lucky from Hostel Above the Clouds already told us yesterday that it was a pretty dry season. We have also seen signs of this. All the leaves and sticks on the path are completely dry.

Getting water is also becoming difficult. The sources are very far from each other and almost all are unreliable. To make matters worse, we relied on a source for our guidance that didn’t even exist. That left us with only a little water to get to the next source. Lesson learned: always double check and cross reference water sources.

Finally we found the smallest of trickling streams and filled our bottles. It took us a while though.

The rest of the day was full of beautiful views. I also really like the ‘fern forests’ as I have called them. It doesn’t look very good in the photos, but they are such a vibrant green color that it almost looks fake. The flower patches between them were great too!

And then… it rained

Oh boy, did it rain? This afternoon we took a good shower! Although our shoes, socks and feet were soaked, we really enjoyed it. The forest really needed it.

However, setting up camp in the rain is not the best. Everything is wet and muddy. We ate our food and headed straight to our tents. I took advantage of the time to clean my feet a little. We also had a signal at our store location, so we called home. It was great talking to my girlfriend, but it also made me really homesick.

After this, I was ready to go to bed. I hope there are no bears tonight.

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