Forget about its name – there’s nothing cute or cuddly about the Otter Trail!

The Otter Trail is one of South Africa’s most well-known hik­ing trails, pop­u­lar with both loc­als and inter­na­tional vis­it­ors thanks largely to its incred­ible scenery. The trail starts at the Storms River mouth and ends at Nature’s Valley in the beau­ti­ful Tsitsikamma Nature Reserve on the Garden Route. The Otter Trail meanders mostly along the rocky shoreline, but changes in elev­a­tion from sea level to about 150m above, lay­ing out the spec­tac­u­lar Eastern Cape coast­line on a plat­ter for your view­ing pleas­ure. Sound good? Don’t under­es­tim­ate the 41 advert­ised kilo­metres — the Otter takes exper­i­enced hikers a total of five days to complete.

Otter Trail Photo by Jomilo75 onFlickr.com who says: "As you can see, the trail lit­er­ally runs along the coast. For much of the trail you are fol­low­ing painted paw prints on the rocks as opposed to an actual trail".

Still keen? Why wouldn’t you be? This hike has been touted as a life-changing exper­i­ence. It’s not often you get to put your phys­ical endur­ance to the test like this, And as far as intro­spec­tion goes, the five days and four nights are bound to teach you a little bit more about who you — and your fel­low hikers — are.

Your trail accom­mod­a­tion con­sists of four overnight stops with two six-sleeper huts each. Mattresses are provided for the triple bunks, and the amen­it­ies stretch to a table and a toi­let, but everything else — sleep­ing bags, food, pots and gas burn­ers for cook­ing — you’ll have to carry with you. Braai facil­it­ies are avail­able, and fire­wood is left along the trail (to add to your load) but it’s strongly advised to bring the afore­men­tioned gas cook­ers along too. Water is avail­able through­out the route from the reserve streams and from rain­wa­ter tanks at overnight stops (don’t rely on these if rain­fall has been sparse), though puri­fic­a­tion tab­lets might be neces­sary if your system’s not used to rough­ing it.

If you were won­der­ing about the trail’s title, it’s named for the Cape Clawless Otter, a spe­cies that occurs in and around the area. And it’s easy to guess why this par­tic­u­lar name was chosen — the trail is most well known for its river cross­ings. Yes, that’s plural. Be pre­pared to get wet, there are eleven cross­ings in total. Two of the lar­ger rivers (Elandsbos and Bloukrans) are really only man­age­able at low tide, so you need to plan ahead and keep an eye on tide sched­ules and rain­fall measures.

Another Otter Trail Photo by Jomilo75 onFlickr.com (Creative Commons License)

But don’t worry, because time to plan is one thing you’ll have plenty of — the immense pop­ular­ity of this trail means that it’s not unheard of to have to book a year to six­teen months in advance. Bookings can be made through the South African National Parks. (con­tact details below).

Heavy packs, steep inclines, long all-day slogs, the river cross­ings and more than a little rock scram­bling pre­clude any­one under 12 or over 65 from doing the trail, and for any­one in-between a reas­on­able degree of fit­ness is required (you’re obvi­ously look­ing at more than a walk in the park).

But whether you do it for the incred­ible scenery, the phys­ical chal­lenge or simply the post-hike brag­ging rights, the Otter Trail should def­in­itely be high up on your hike-before-I-die list.

Otter Trail Reservations:
Telephone: +27 (0)12 426‑5111
Fax: +27 (0)12 343‑0905
Visit the SANP web­site for book­ings — Otter Trail Bookings

Photographs:
View a Flickr Slideshow of pho­to­graphs taken on the Otter Trail. (3214 pho­tos tagged Otter Trail!)