Near the hot sulphur Palm Springs, reached only on Day 3 due to late morning starts, Godfrey miraculously found another water stream and filled up. But it was never enough to last through the hot days.

By Day 4, thirst forced his fussy resolve to drop. , Thereafter he would rush towards the river pool and fill his bottles (forgetting the purification drops), drink up, and wet his hat or take a swim to cool down.

On this hike my worldly thoughts switched off and I was in full focus on the Canyon. With each mindful step, I engaged with the majestic Canyon, her rocks, loose beige sand, her variety of earthy colours and her string of differently shaped river pools.

How does a sea shell end up in your belly?

How have you acquired these royal colours like your golden-brown mountains; black and grey rocks, granite formations, to pure white, deep purple and sweet pink-coloured stones?

And just how do you manage to sprout the greenest bushes with the yellowest and whitest flowers that stand out in a desert of sand?

Footprints in the sand guided our path. My nephew, Allistair, who walked in front, followed an ‘ice-block-tray’-shaped shoe print for most of the route. My mind wondered to who the wearer of this shoe was? Was he young? Was he an experienced hiker? Did he enjoy the hike? Or was he rushing through? I assumed the ‘ice-block-tray’ shoe-print person (perhaps wrongly so) to be a man because of the size of the footprint.

We were four men and one woman who completed the hike which starts at the Hobas Nature Reserve and ends at Ais Ais Resort on Saturday, 03 September 2022.

To be continued…