SOUTH AFRICA: Hiking Table Mountain

The sun was rising as we approached Cape Town and it was freezing outside. A bunch of us woke up before dawn and put on as many layers as possible to venture out to the nose of the ship on the 7th deck. Even in the twilight, Table Mountain was visible in the distance. I waited with some of my hall mates to see the sun peak above its flat summit....

Days earlier, while still at sea, the MV Explorer received a fax informing us to avoid Mombasa, Kenya - our next location after Cape Town. We were told that because of increasing terrorism attacks and links to Al Quida, there was a high risk of any American (well, white) tourists being targeted. I remember something about the U.S. Military even shifting their presence in Mombasa - if the military is nervous about being in Kenya, imagine what that those kind of threats would do to nearly 700 (mostly) American students and adults...The good news was, we were to stay in South Africa until we figured out where in the world we'd be headed next, extending our stay in Cape Town to an entire week rather than the scheduled five days.

Table Mountain was immediately on my Cape Town "to-do" list. I wanted to scale it anyway possible. The second day we were in Cape Town, three of my other hallmates (Brent from Philadelphia, Sean from Northern California and Rob from...somewhere) and I packed not nearly enough water, some trail mix and sunscreen and started out for the botanical gardens that housed a gagillion Table Mountain trail heads. We had no idea where we would end up or how long it would take to get there...or how hard of a hike we were naively choosing. We had no idea really what we were in for, which is against outdoors(wo-)man's intuition, but we were STOKED.

TRAIL HEAD
The garden sat at the base of Table Mountain - the mountain triumphantly blossomed skywards, covered with a thousand of shades of green, leveling off on top to hide the Mars-scape of its summit. We wandered through the garden for a little bit and then found a trail head in the back of the park. At first it seemed rather innocent; the trail was curvy but flat and shaded by jungle green. Soon the trail became a series of boulders shifted into huge steps which turned into wooden latters. Eventually, the trail disappeared and we starting climbing upstream - water was flowing over the rocks and our shoes down the side of the mountain. It was dyed red from iron deposits in the rocks. Climbing up a vertical creek bed with red water flowing over white rocks and bright green vines was certainly a bit surreal.

IRON RED GORGE
As we climbed higher, a trail reemerged that took us away from trickling water. We reached an opening in the 'jungle' that offered a view of Cape Town from wwaaaaayyyy further up than I thought we were. The trail zig-zagged a few more times to where we found a sign directing us to "Skull's Gorge." We barely stopped long enough to ponder the thought that a 'gorge' is usually a body of water. Minutes later, the dirt turned into white fine sand and the trees progressively grew closer to the ground and offered thinner cover. As the trail leveled off and we approached the 'table' of the mountain, I thought I was on another planet. The ground was flat for miles in front of us until it dropped off in the distance because we'd reach the end of the world. There were huge white, chalky boulders that surrounded a dammed reservoir of iron red water. Little green shrubs burrowed into the white sand and to our right a ways off was some sort of stone structure that was manned by a lone park ranger. We scaled a boulder for a water break, but none of us spoke.

Rested, we started walking on a road that was to take us...nowhere. At one point a small, dented pickup recklessly passed us with a dozen people in the bed that blankly stared at us as they drove away. I felt like we were walking in circles and it was hot without the jungle shade we were under an hour ago. We saw the lone park ranger out-and-about a ways away from us and scrambled towards him. He didn't speak any English and we couldn't even identify his language (South Africa has 11 official languages, 9 of which are considered tribal...) but somehow we expressed that we were lost and he showed us a trail, rather than a road. We ended up backtracking a bit, crossed the dam that split the red lake in two, and zig-zagged again up and over a hill. We stopped again on the hillside. The red lake was below us and the edge of the world was visible. Light grey puffs of clouds padded the landscape at the far end of the mountain and blended with a grey sea where the Atlantic and Indian oceans mixed - the closest shore to us beyond Table Mountain was Antarctica, thousands of miles to the south.

HILLS AND VALLEYS, VALLEYS AND HILLS
At this point, I was down to my last inch of water in my Nalgene and it seemed my hallmates were in the same situation. We munched on a bag of trailmix Sean magically pulled out of his bag for the first time, even though all of us grumbled about our stomachs rumbling while walking the wrong way on the wrong road. We reached the top of the hill only to discover two shallow valleys and hilltops ahead - and that's what we could see. Below in the valley closest to us, we saw another hiker, our first hiking passerby since leaving the garden. When we met him in the bottom of the valley, he told us (in English) we had maybe three more hours to go until we reached the cable cars. This was good and bad news. Good news was that we had an final destination - and it included cable cars that would take back to the bottom of the mountain. Bad news was that we were out of water. About two hours later we had scaled the two valleys and hilltops and left them in our dust.

CABLE CARS OVER THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
Once we climbed over the last hilltop, we were expecting the worst - which would have been another serious of lonely changes of elevation. The sun was behind the clouds and even though we were glad the sun wasn't beating down on us wasn't like it was when we reached the gorge, we were nervous because we couldn't tell if the sun was about to go down or if it was just overcast. Then I heard people - their voices were faint, but I was happy to have another human encounter to ensure that someone knew we were up there. Once we got over the ridge, there were tourists everywhere and we could see the cable cars, a museum and a restaurant. One woman was chasing her kid across the rocks in high-heeled sandals. We emerged a little haggard, oozing a sense of ruggedness. Those fresh off a five minute cable car ride up the mountain were enjoying the views in designer sweaters and shoes. We surged over the rocks, ignoring the meandering trail, towards whatever building was closest. We reserved a spot on the last cable car down the mountain (which was scheduled for sundown). We had enough time to eat fat, juicy burgers and a mountainous side of fries outside, and tried to find the invisible divide between the Atlantic and Indian ocean. Then, right on schedule, the sun followed us down the side of Table Mountain.