Table Mountain

May 1

First day in Cape Town! It was so exciting to be in Cape Town, which I had been looking forward to all semester. Although it was hard to leave Windhoek, Cape Town is a good transition point from the academic semester abroad to being home, and being back in my “normal” life.

After a morning spent at a church in Khayelitsa, a group of us took the afternoon to climb Table Mountain. We weren’t able to get started on our climb until about 2:30, so I was a little nervous about either getting back down before dark, or about making it to the top before the last cable car down (both at about 5:00). So, because we were under a time crunch, getting to the top was more stressful than it should have been, and we weren’t able to enjoy the way up as much as I wanted to.

View from the start of our hike

part of the trail

I ended up climbing with Tamara and Lee, and we brought up the rear. But I like to think that means we got the most out of our climb, because we took the time to stop, take in the view, take pictures, drink the ever important water. The trail up was really rocky, and essentially like climbing stairs. It was kind of intense (the trail climbs an impressive 2100 feet), but the views of Cape Town were incredible on the climb up. The trail was in shade for most of the time, and it cut through the rocks so sometimes you couldn’t see much, but then it would cut out and the city of Cape Town lay beneath your feet. There were lots of other people climbing Table Mountain when we were, and there was one man hiking with his daughter who started talking to us when we took one of our many water breaks. He had already talked to the other people in our group who were climbing, so as he was talking to us he asked if we were part of the group going to Robben Island the next day, and he knew all about our trip. Apparently the group of college age Americans were pretty distinctive on Table Mountain.

views of Cape Town during the hike

Lee and Tamara on the hike, it was pretty hot and intense!

We finally reached the top, and it was so amazing! Once we reached the top we were in the sun again, and the views were so incredible. You could see all of Cape Town and the ocean in a couple of different directions. Unfortunately, we had to rush a little bit on the top, because we only had about 30 minutes before the last cable car going down the mountain, and I had no desire to hike down the mountain in the dark. But the cable car was fun; it rotated as the car went down so you were able to have views of Cape Town and the ocean. There were about 8 of us who rode the cable car down, and we figured we would have to wait for a couple hours for the rest of our group before we could get Passat to come pick us up. But Passat came through for us, and came early because he figured we would be done.

views from the tope of Table Mountain

Me and Katelyn

That night I went to dinner with my Cape Town roommates, Katelyn, Lee, and Amy. We wandered down Long Street, looking at all the different restaurants we had to choose from. We started in a big group, but then split up when it became apparent we all had different tastes for dinner. The four of us got pizza for dinner, which was great, and had a good time watching people walking down Long Street. All in all, it made for a good first day in Cape Town.