Table Mountain is roughly 3,000 ft and is one of the main attractions in Cape Town as you can take a cable car to the top to take pictures and have lunch at a restaurant and café. The view overlooking the bay and city below is beautiful.
There are a number of different trails and hikes that outdoor enthusiasts can choose from to make their way to the top. For sake of time we chose one of the quicker hikes that takes about 2 hours to climb, however, it is quite steep as you are climbing rocks like a set of stairs and the rocks are all varying in size and height.
I climbed in my ‘vibram five fingers’ and I was getting a lot of funny looks from other hikers climbing the mountain as it looked as if I were climbing bare foot, which was the idea!! The shoes were surprisingly comfortable on this climb and my feet literally gripped the rocks like a mountain lion and I felt very grounded and balanced. I cannot imagine climbing these rocks in a hard bulky pair of boots.
We learned our lesson from getting scorched by the sun the day before at Cape Point, so we stopped periodically to dowse ourselves with sunscreen lotion.
We met some people on the way up and had a good time talking and climbing with them. Rema and Phil were both backpacking solo in S. Africa from Canada and Wales. It was nice having a larger group to climb with as crime is still pretty bad even in some of the touristy areas. One of the bikers that I met at Chapman’s Peak said that they love to hike and mountain bike on trails, however, they never go with a group smaller than 6 people, due to the amount of attacks that can take place. They told us stories of how they have been attacked in JoBurg while on rides. Though this is a touristy area there are still a lot of people who hide out in the mountains and attack climbers to steal their money, cameras and anything else they might have of value. After meeting up with Rema and Phil we stopped to take a few pictures along the trail and we were commenting on a barb wire fence that outlined part of the trail. We thought it was an odd thing to have barb wire as it could hurt people who could easily fall into the fence. We later learned that the park rangers put that in place as a deterrent for criminals who like to hide out behind large rocks and jump out to attack hikers. So this was put in place to slow down their movements. Rema and Phil were telling us about a recent attack that took place last month on a different trail in S. Africa where some Canadian tourists were actually stabbed and robbed. Luckily their injuries turned out to be minor.
Near this same area was a group of four shady individuals who looked like they live in the mountains and they were walking down towards us. The first thing I noticed was that the lead guy in the pack had on old basketball shoes without laces. That struck me as odd as that is the last type of shoes you would want to wear on a long climb. They looked as if they were up to no good. Eric was eyeing them down like a hawk and getting ready to pounce. Luckily nothing went down, but we were glad to be in a larger group. It’s all about “Strength in Numbers!”
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