On Saturday, a group of us decided to hike up sugar loaf mountain, one of the many hills that make up the beautiful Peninsular of the ‘Western Area’ region of Sierra Leone. Since my experience of hiking dates well back to a year 9 biology trip to Somerset somewhere on a trip to study fresh-water plankton, ending in a random hike up a hill in the sticky British July summer heat, my first impression was ‘erm… can i really be bothered?’ Also, having spent the last couple of weeks sick, of nausea and dizziness possibly attributed a combination of the lack of iron in my diet and the side effects of the anti-malarials i am currently taking, I wasn’t sure I was fit enough for a 2 hour ascent up a bumpy hill.
Waking up on Saturday morning, with one eye creaking open, when I looked out of the window to see clouds engorged with an ostensible promise of rain, I mentally composed an apologetic text message to the others to say I was so staying in bed! But like clockwork, my body and mind had drifted into ‘awake-time’ and I knew sleep would not come till it became once more dark. So I got up and got dressed (to the surprise of my housemate, who commented on the fact that I was up and ready to go!)
So we hurried out of the house and got a lift up the hill to the Hill Station St. Mary’s Supermarket (according to them ‘the mother of all supermarkets’!) and waited for the rest of the group. Outside the supermarket were a large group of a mixed school group of local and expat kids in matching logoed white t-shirts, surrounded by adults, obviously there to supervise them on a walk/run of some kind. We noted that it seemed like a competitive sort of outing, since some of the adults had come in running gear, some fashionable, others obviously ready to claim first place at the end of the day, leaving us to wonder whether they were there to support the excited kids or the other way round! Anyway, the rest of our group appeared and we left the group jogging up the winding hilly road (which in my opinion seemed quite unsafe…).
We soon arrived in Regent, where we alighted and with our backpacks (I was teased for taking my longchamp backpack, for looking a bit too ladylike for a hiking trip! <shrug>) and water bottles, began our trek into the terrain of the sugar loaf. We had instructions to follow a trail of red white and blue splodges, marked earlier by kind hikers who had found their way to the top. So armed with this information, we set off, following the pipeline to the entrance point. Within 10 minutes, we were into the green of the forest, climbing and reaching, and hoisting ourselves up to higher ground, and as can be expected on an unguided trip into the unknown, were already shouting back and forth that we could no longer see any of the coloured splodges, and must therefore be off the designated path!
NOTE TO READER: CHAMPION FLIES are small two-tone ants, that look innocent enough, but if you accidentally brush them off, they release acidic content into your skin, causing a painful and red track wherever your infected hand touches. It looks as painful as it sounds! A friend mentioned that it will make us all a bit more Buddhist in our regard for tiny creatures, as we are forced to blow them off gently!
We finally made it to a flat clearing, where we all rested and sat down for some snacks and recuperated. But wait, this surely wasn’t the top! We were told there was a visible mark at the top, but besides the fact there was nothing to see apart from a small clearing (i had expected a bronzed image of a sugar loaf, personally!), it had only taken us an hour to get there! Though brave pioneers we were, hacking our own route to the top, there was no way we could have done it in an hour! After minutes of peering at the map and turning it in different directions, enlightenment dawned and one of the team announced that we were not at the summit of Sugar Loaf Mountain as expected, but had in fact climbed the adjacent hill. OOPS! Feeling slightly sheepish, we all agreed to descend and climb the actual mountain. I mean we still had hours of daylight left!
An hour later, following plenty of ‘no, no, not this way, not the path, we need to go back and find another route’, we met up with another group who were to meet us, who had laughably climbed the wrong hill too! Then collectively, we scrambled around searching for the right mountain, temporarily loosing a member of the group in the process. By this juncture, we had forgone the idea of following coloured splodges (It had been a couple of hours since we had spotted one either way!) After minutes of descending, the hikers at the front finally found the splodges and correct path… hurray… and a dynamic few decided to continue to the top. The rest of us cut our losses and decided to save the sweet loaf for another day, deciding instead to pass our next couple of hours with a sumptuous, well-deserved meal at Mamba Point!
So after all that, what did I learn? I learnt that if you want to climb a mountain, you had better make sure you have a guide that knows the way or you WILL get lost, and that short sleeves on sugar loaf is a bad idea! Even still, with a minor rash from poisonous scratches and a slight limp due to a sprained muscle in my foot, I still thoroughly enjoyed myself, and though my next credit card bill won’t be to a climbing course, I would definitely consider doing it again!
Banke xxx
N.B. We named our newly discovered mountain ‘small small’ sugar loaf!
