On the Coast

I’ve been to the stretch of Indian Ocean coast in this region several times before. It is called the Wild Coast and is wonderful. My fellow missionary Matt and I used our time off around Christmas to explore a stretch of Coast a bit further away. It was much less populated, much rockier and rougher (no beaches to laze the day away on), and much harder to get to, involving some serious hiking to get anywhere neat.

But the rewards were great. Our goals were Waterfall Bluff, one of the few places in the world where a waterfall falls directly into the ocean, and Cathedral Rock, which, as you will see in the pictures below, is aptly named.

We spent a few days hiking around the area, dodging cows, sweating through the absolutely hottest and most humid weather I have ever experienced here, swimming upstream from the falls in some great pools and hopefully not getting any bacterial infections, holding on for dear life through some fierce windstorms that took down a few wind turbines in the area, chasing the monkeys away from our food, belting out carols on Christmas Eve (and what was surely the first-ever rendition of “North to Alaska” on the shore of the Indian Ocean) and generally reading and relaxing.

The pictures, of course, don’t do any kind of justice to the magnificence of the area.
I’m not actually sure which is Cathedral Rock but they are both cool.
Our favourite swimming hole.
There’s a Far Side caption here somewhere.
Shipwrecks are a common theme on this stretch of Coast. This one is from 2004.