By Elliot

Distance: 30km

When we woke up this morning, our tent was covered in condensation. It’s not fun to pack up a wet tent, but we had little choice.

Neither of us being particularly hungry, we had some oatmeal for breakfast, and then set off.

We walked on the beach for 30km. It was monotony punctuated by the occasional pick up truck speeding by right by the water. For an idea of what it looked like most of the day, see Ruth walking.

We stopped after about 2 hours for a snack. A little after that, both of us were feeling nauseous, Ruth more so than me. But we had to keep walking.

At some point it started raining, first lightly, then with increasing intensity.

In brief, it was windy, it was rainy, and Ruth was feeling ill and couldn’t stomach eating anything. I spent a large part of the day questioning the choices I made that led to me walking down a long stretch of beach in the rain with a heavy pack. I know that I wanted to experience something other than the comfortable existence I live back home, but couldn’t the trail ease me into it? Eventually the sun came out, Ruth felt better, our spirits rose, and we made it to camp.

The campsite has flush toilets and hot showers, which were a much needed after our long day of walking. And it’s a gorgeous place to watch the sunset.

One thing of note is that almost all the hikers at this point have blisters, some quite bad. It was both painful and pretty funny watching watching everyone waddle around camp, not being able to walk properly.

Tomorrow is a much shorter day, so we’re hoping to use that to recover from the big two days we just did.