arguably a bit exaggerating, but chances don't come every sunday (splendid weather and a willing group) so it had to be TABLE MOUNTAIN. it would almost have become a german sunday as well - if it wasn't for aire, super miss estonia being able to fly (with martin holding up the cape (wordplay???) ) and springbok (although they lost tremendously in rugby on saturday) across the slopes of table mountain - ok ok, let's start from the beginning.
we started off at the lower cable way station. there would have been an easy way up - the cable way. too expensive. and not part of our plan (judging the disneyland atmosphere on top, plan of quite a few other people though).
and as soon as you are up, there is another good reason for not taking it - the whole construction is kind of dodgy and supported by one big cable drum...
let's do it the hard way. apart from housemates and glennies, two students of the university in bayreuth joined us - and who would have guessed, ludgera with whom i'd been to the summer school in spring about africa earlier this year was among them. some more traces of a small world.
after knowing people had told me not to hike up through the india venster i could luckily convince the rest of the group wanting to take it ('but it looks shorter!') not to take it - with the help of a few as usual well-meaning afrikaaner women crossing our way. we decided for platteklip gorge instead, which allowed for a nice hike around the mountain with a stunning view on cape town first.
platteklip itself stopped being so pleasant after quite short a time: steps steps steps up the gorge. despite well meaning step paintings
and people coming down from the top ('it's only 40 minutes left') the last 40 minutes for me became approximately 1 1/2 hours away from the rest of the group which was decidedly fitter - giving up was not an option though (going down would have taken WAY longer that climbing up the last few metres).
so this is very close to total exhaustion...i passed out for 5 minutes in between, and somehow reached the 'thing' at the end of the gorge (a landscape mh, 'thing' demarcating possible paths on top and down the mountain again) - no wonder martin was confused when i phoned him and asked whether they'd gone left or right from the thing. slight confusion due to exhaustion. they were at the cable way station however and easy to find. and honestly - as soon as i stepped out of the gorge, i was feeling all well again. funny (and my luck, i was so close to taking the horribly expensive cable car and missing out on the fun that came then...such as posing with the handsome germans on top).
our plan was to hike down to kirstenbosch botanical gardens and then reach obs before 7 pm in order to be in time for the pizza special at roots. now that's an incentive! so: maclear's beacon (seems you can see cape point and another point from there - we weren't sure which was which anyways) for a quick power-muffin-sharing stop - sharing makes food taste better!
- a walk along smuts path (lovely scenery) and arrival at skeleton gorge for the descent. marked by warning signs. south african warnings are a complicated thing - best thing is to find out for yourself. although i was imagining horrible hanging-on-a-cliff-scenarios and opposed the descent first, we nevertheless went for it (and came down with only minor incidences).
knees hurting, legs shaking, sweating - happiness prevailing, down in kirstenbosch. some stretching and some waiting for a now-now coming cab - off we went to obs at 6:15 pm. done it!
(n.b.: didn't ever think about hiking shoes. adidas samba football shoes are astonishingly versatile)
No comments:
Post a Comment