Table Mountain? No sweat.

No really. We climbed Table Mountain and by the time I got to the top, I had no sweat, because it all froze to my body. Ok, rewind.

So Wednesday was Election Day in South Africa, thus the day off and my opportunity to finally go up the mountain. But first – the election. It was so interesting seeing another presidential election so shortly after ours, especially considering the candidates we had running. One thing I might’ve mentioned, here in South Africa you vote for a party and then that percentage of votes they get determines those who end up in office. I know it’s more specific than that, there’s even a real term for it I think, but all I compare it to is that it’s the same as Israel and I know how it works there. So I guess I somewhat understand how it works here. Anyway. The two front running parties are the ANC and the DA. From what I’ve personally seen, there has been a lot more campaigning (using signs, brochures, advertisements, t-shirts, etc) from the DA. However the ANC is the party that came out of apartheid and is therefore already much more established. Also, one thing I love (which I also might have already mentioned) is that the symbol for the DA is remarkably similar to Obama’s.

As the election drew closer I tried to talk to people about what they think of the parties and it was interesting because a lot of people I’ve talked to in Cape Town said that they actually think the DA would be good but beyond here, it sounds like the ANC has too much of a hold for the DA to win the presidency. This is mainly due to the fact that the ANC has Jacob Zuma running and despite all the things he’s done wrong (some accusations were even taken to court although they were just dropped), he’s black. Meanwhile the front runner for the DA is Helen Zille, the current mayor of Cape Town. She’s white. So even though she’s doing a great job in Cape Town, especially considering the majority of the country, to vote for her would be like going backward to apartheid. Mind you, these are the opinions of just a few people I’ve talked to so they in no way represent what the entire country thinks but I found it all extremely interesting. And another thing (last bit about the election), voting was yesterday but the results should be in tomorrow-ish. There’s no way I could’ve waited that long for the results from this past year’s election, we’ll just have to see what happens now. So there you go; the election from my standpoint.

Because of the election it was declared a public holiday so we didn’t have lectures. The weather was supposed to be pretty nice which is getting rarer as winter creeps up on us. So we wanted to make sure to take advantage of the day and climb Table Mountain. I’ve wanted to go up since we got here and if I didn’t get to hike up while here, I pretty much would’ve considered my time here a failure. Anyway, there were 5 of us going and only 2 had been up, one hiking and the other via cable car. We started out going straight from Mowbray because there are paths visible from campus. First we reached Rhodes Memorial, that place that had been on fire a few weeks ago, remember? Well the memorial wasn’t but the surrounding area was. It was all burned up, crazy. But the memorial was pretty cool even though I know it’s controversial. We took a short break there to look out over the city and continued but before long we reached a point where the path split into 3 directions. Asking a few people the best way to get up the mountain we got 3 different answers but the main thing was that the main, recommended path was on the other side of the mountain. So we could take a number of other ways but if we were looking for that main one, we’d have to walk around which was (according to the 3 people we asked) between 10-20 kilometers away.

The decision was made to walk around the mountain, one that I wasn’t too thrilled with but everyone else was ok with it so I didn’t say anything. We stopped many more people along the way to ask more about directions and generally for advice but everyone told us different things so we just kept on walking. The path got pretty intense a few times and it seemed like we were going the right way one minute and then the wrong way the next. We eventually reached a stone building that was not where we had been meaning to go but we were told that we could get to the recommended route from there. So after another break, we kept on. Let’s just say that a little over 3 hours later, we reached the base of the recommended route at Platteklip Gorge. According to the signs it would take us 2 hours to get to the top and it was here that one of the girls needed to go back to do work as none of us had expected to be out so long.

Now there were 4 of us and it was already nearing 1pm, we had started hiking close to 10 but were just starting the real hiking up the mountain. Considering that we were already a bit tired from the walk/hike to the gorge I’m surprised how quickly (relative to how long they said it would take) we made it up. I trailed most of the way up mainly because I took my time near the beginning and eventually, by the time I would catch up with the others, I was out of breath and they were just beginning to climb again. I didn’t mind, I was glad to take it at my own pace and I even stopped and talked to some people going up as well and even got encouraging words from those coming down saying “not too much further” and such. Some people were going up for their first times; others had been up many times before. Some were from the area; others were from America, Germany, and other countries.

Shortly before 2:30 I breathlessly sprinted up the last few meters to the top of Table Mountain which means the hike up it took me about an hour and a half. Woooo!! It was exhausting but the view was absolutely amazing. It was such a feeling of accomplishment, even though I was ready to just fall down where I was standing so I could catch my breath. For whatever reason, I had it in my head that it was going to be flat on top, and compared to some mountains it was really flat, but I was still initially surprised to see the rough surface, bushes, and signs of animals. I wandered around for a while looking out at Cape Town and down the peninsula before finding the others and we stopped by the café to sit and drink a lot of water. Oh yeah, there’s a café, restaurants, a gift shop, and other things on top of Table Mountain mostly by the cable car. There are also paths and lots of signs all around for people who want to explore. I stopped to put on my sweatshirt which we had luckily thought about before hand. It had started getting cooler about half way up the mountain as the breeze picked up and once on the top, the wind was strong. After spending just a bit of time walking around we went for the cable car to take us down which was neat; the floor spins so you can see all around on the way down.

So there you have it. My first venture up Table Mountain.

Check that off the list.
Sarah