Table Mountain

Miles is still sick today, but decided to come with us anyhow. Today was Table Mountain day. I wasn’t looking forward to this too much because of the possibility that I would have to hike it. The hike is supposed to be quite gruesome—a three hour hike straight up the mountain side. I’m not a hiker to begin with, so that would probably be the death of me. I wanted to take the cable car up and down instead of hiking one way, and since Miles wasn’t feeling too good, that was the place. But, when we arrived, the wind was blowing so strong that the cable car was shut down. I was really disappointed about this, and Miles and Lauren decided that we should hike it. It was a ten minute walk to get to the start of the hike, so we all started on our way, I very reluctantly. We got to the official start point of the hike, and it took me about ten minutes to finally be convinced/pressured to come. We walked straight up these horrible rock “stairs” for about five minutes when Miles told us to stop. I turned around, and he asked me if I was sure I wanted to do this, again!! I had already begrudgingly agreed at the bottom and was already starting to regret that decision, when he asked me again. Obviously I wasn’t going to enjoy the hike at all, and I wasn’t even sure if I could do it. He wanted to check again that I was prepared for this hike, and I was really frustrated, so finally decided that I would just wait for them at the bottom. The cable car might not even be working by the time we reached the top, which would mean we would have to hike all the way back down as well. I was most certainly not able to do that, if I could even get all the way to the top in the first place. So, I just hung out for the hours that they hiked. We were already quite high up and could see the whole city anyhow! I got fabulous pictures from where I was. It would have been cool to see the city from the very top, but something I could live without. I kind of wish the cable car was functioning, but it IS winter and Cape Town is very famous for its crazy winter winds, so what could I do?

I found out that the cable car WAS still closed when they arrived at the top, so they had to hike all the way down. I’m glad I didn’t have to do that; not sure if I would have made it. They were both SO incredibly sore that they could barely walk when I picked them up. I of course was totally fine hehe. While they were hiking, I met up with Gregg at Café Caprice for a little bit before we went to pick them up. We brought them back and had lunch and let them relax for a while. After lunch, we walked down the street and had ice cream at a place called Sinnfull. It was really good. On the way back to the car, a man had a metal wire tied between two palm trees on the beach and was walking across it! He was even doing a one legged dance on it and spinning a bicycle wheel. Then he lit a branch on fire and rubbed it all over his body and put it down his pants without hurting himself all on the wire seven feet above the ground. It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. Miles and Lauren were practically dying at this point, so I drove them home so that they could shower and rest before deciding what the next move is; we might come back to hang out with Gregg, but we will see how the two mountain climbers are feeling first.