Climbing Table Mountain and the Cape Town Waterfront, South Africa (Part 2)

When I learned I was going to South Africa, I knew there was one thing I most certainly would do somehow, someway while I was there...  I would climb Table Mountain!

Table Mountain is one of the most famous, most spectacularly perfect plateaus on the planet.  You can see it in almost any picture of Cape Town, and if you watched any of the World Cup, you most certainly saw it in the backdrop of Cape Town's football stadium.

I manage to find some hiking to do almost anywhere I travel, and I do much of it alone.  I was quite excited when I mentioned my plans to a few of my colleagues and they wanted to join me!

We left the guest house after breakfast and drove toward Cape Town and the foot of the mountain.  It truly dominates the skyline from every direction.

We parked quite tenuously on a very steep embankment.  This picture just doesn't do it justice...

I had planned on hiking a route called Skeleton Gorge, starting in the gardens on the far side of the mountain.  Instead, we drove up a bit of the lower elevations and parked at the foot of the cable car station.  This made for a bit more reasonable return trip, as a number of our party had a flight out later in the evening and were on a bit of a schedule.

The cable car up Table Mountain is an icon of the city, and has been around for a very long time.  This is the base station.  I thought it looked rather imposing, perhaps as a medieval fortification.

The cable cars themselves had been modernized recently in preparation for the World Cup.

I had but a very crude map in my guide book.  I wasn't too worried about it, as the trails looked to be very thoroughly marked, but we did snap a couple of pictures of a high resolution topographical map, just in case...

Handy trick I use all the time when hiking...  Now that digital cameras are 10-15 megapixels, take a picture of maps when you see them, and save them as a "favorite" in the camera for quick reference!  Very, very convenient.  At least until your battery runs out :-o

Eight of us started up the mountain on a perfectly clear summer day.  The heat and elevation would get to two members of our party, who headed back down and took the cable car up.

As is typical in such a hike, the views of the city below got more and more dramatic.

Our route up the mountain was directly below the cable cars for much of the hike, reminding us that what we were doing was very much a personal deliberate choice -- you know, to put one foot in front of the other, hand over hand scrambling up rocks, climbing 2500 feet in vertical elevation in a little over 3 hours.  All that, instead of $10 and a 5 minute ride on the cable car.  Me, I loved every minute of the walk ;-)  And it's not just because I'm a cheap skate.

The temperatures got pretty warm as we climbed. It was in the 60s when we started, and the upper 80s by the time we finished.  I think my time hiking and running in Texas had me pretty well acclimated to the heat, and I handled it well.

Other than a few clouds on the horizon, we had really clear, beautiful skies.

This view, with Signal Hill on the far left, gives a bit of perspective on the tranquility of the day.  Here, we about halfway up the mountain, and roughly even in elevation with Signal Hill.

There are guardrails, and some very, very vertical cliff faces on this hike up the mountain.  My feet dangled off the edge of this boulder, hundreds of feet above the next lower precipice.

There were several spots of moderate "climbing" required.  I'd call a few of the "routes" maybe 5.6's in a US rating.  Most were 15 feet or less in vertical ascent, but even a 5 or 10 foot fall could be very dangerous.

Some of the less craggy spots had helper handles and steps.  This little scramble had about 4 or 5 of these steps, vertically ascending a large sandstone boulder.

I'm probably breaking a good sweat at this point :-)

Once we crossed right, over the arete, we could see Camps Bay and some of the lovely white sand beaches.

Oh, and no account of South Africa would be complete without an introduction to the incredible Protea flower.  It's the national flower of South Africa, and just beautiful.

It looks sort of like a sunflower, attached to a giant succulent plant.

Fortunately, we were going "up", and not "down" here.  Truly, some of the scrambling we did up those crags would have been very challenging, blind down climbs.

And roughly 3 hours after we started, six of us made it to the top.  Our other two buddies were waiting there at the top for us.  What a morning!

Now Claire just insisted that we all drink a Coca Cola when we got to the top of the Mountain.  I'm not one to drink a lot of Coke, but damn, she was right.  That was one delicious Coke!

Most of the rest of my party needed to leave, to head the airport and such.  I had the rest of the day, and the following day, so I hung around the top of the mountain, and hiked the perimeter trail (which was pretty much perfectly flat, as one should expect on the top of a plateau).

As you can imagine, the views from the top are second-to-none in Cape Town!

Having hiked several miles before lunch, I thought I would check in on the beach bums 3500 feet below me.

Yup, sitting around with their feet in the sand :-)  Looks like they're having a good time.

Oh, and I understand it's also impossible to visit Table Mountain without making acquaintance with a "dassie" or two!  I was assured that this little guy was somehow related to the elephant, believe it or not :-)

Of the souvenirs I did not bring home to Kim, Dassie Droppings  are on that list.

Robben Island is quite easy to spot, a few miles off the coast of the Cape Town harbor.  This is Cape Town's equivalent of Alcatraz -- an island prison that sadly held Nelson Mandela prisoner for 27 years.

 

It's also hard to miss Cape Town's brand new football stadium, built specifically for the 2010 World Cup.

It's a striking structure, sort of like a warped tire or rim.

I spotted a number of lizards and other small reptiles, scurrying through the rocks and bushes.

I was warned by our local host to beware of two things ... high winds, at which point a "hooter" (the South African word for "horn") would sound...

...and the "blister bush" which has the annoying quality of causing immediate blisters which are severely agitated by sunlight.  The trick was that no one actually knew what this blister bush looked like!

Somehow, we all managed to stay away.

I considered hiking down the back side of the mountain, which would soon be in shade.  However, I also wanted to spend some time in downtown Cape Town and on the Waterfront.  I managed to convince myself that no trip to Cape Town would be complete without at least riding the iconic cable car once.

I caught a right with a random taxi driver (who would actually define the rest of my trip -- see the next post).  He dropped me off near the waterfront at the Dutch clock tower.

Having had only a bowl of granola for breakfast, and an ice cream at the top of the mountain, it was time for lunch!

I set down at Emily's Snack Bar, a quaint little eatery right next to the swing bridge and across from the Victorian African Trading Post.

Here, I positively gulped down a Castle Lager beer (mediocre to the beer nerd, cold and delicious to the thirsty nerd).

And I had one of the best grilled-cheese-and-tomato sandwiches I could recall in recent memory.

As I sat water side, I thoroughly enjoyed watching the seals play in the harbor.

After lunch, I went for a very long walk around town.  Somehow, the hike up the mountain just wasn't enough.  This picture reminded me of my sweetheart, Kim.  Ice cream and blue cheese -- two of her favorite things!

Here's Table Mountain, dominating the skyline.  The point at the very top right is the upper cable car station.

Ah, a detail of the cable car station itself.  I was up there about an hour earlier.

I walked most of the length of Long Street, which is Cape Town's version of Sixth Street, or perhaps Bourbon Street.

This building, in particular, reminded me of something one might see in New Orleans, with the wrought iron railings and ornate balconies.

My cab driver, Addy, tried to convince me to skip out on downtown and the Waterfront altogether and instead head over to the Rugby stadium and catch the afternoon match.  I personally couldn't justify spending my only full afternoon in Cape Town at a Rugby game alone, but I did dip into an Irish pub, and watch a Guinness worth of the game.  Some of those dudes look mean!

After wandering around the town a bit, I walked back to the waterfront, and started seeking out a nice spot to watch the sunset.  Here, I'm crossing the swing bridge, near where I had lunch.

The Waterfront is quite touristy, and definitely not the sort of place locals congregate.  Some of my colleagues described it as Navy Pier in Chicago or Fisherman's Wharf in San Fransisco.  That's pretty accurate.  It was touristy.  But it was also safe, and very clean.  I didn't need to spend a lot of time there, but I did want to a feel for it.

I made it down to the end of the Waterfront district and watch the sunset out a ways on the breakers.  Here's the sun setting behind the soccer stadium.

The sun would dance on the upper ridges of Table Mountain before trailing off of there too.

And eventually crash down behind the Atlantic Ocean in the distance.

I finished my night at a pub on the Waterfront, watching the end of another rugby match and sipping on the positively delicious local cream liqueur, Amarula.  It's a little like Irish cream, but with less of a whisky bite to it.  It's made from the fruit of a tree in Africa, which is interesting, in that it doesn't taste fruity at all.  You can search the youtubes for funny videos of drunk baboons and elephants, having eaten too many amarula fruit :-)

I hired the same cab driver who took me from Table Mountain to the Waterfront to bring me back to my guest house, way out in Durbanville.  On the way home, I negotiated a day rate with Addy, for him to pick me up on Sunday morning, show me around for the day, before dropping me off at the airport in time for my 8:30pm flight.  Check the next post for my Sunday spent driving around Cape Point....

:-Dustin