Me and my twinkle toes are gonna hike Table Mountain today!
Let’s start at the beginning. We took a bus to the bottom of the mountain, and our guide was funny and informative and as we meandered up the road he was telling us funny and interesting stories about all sorts of things. We stopped and smelled the flowers and the blossoming trees...rose coloured glasses and all that. I think birds may have been swooping down and sprinkling flower petals upon us. The morning had been cloudy with a few showers, but then a wind came up and magically blew all the clouds away....ahhh.....it was going to be a glorious hike!
This is how high we were above Capetown before we started to hike, this is at the bottom of the mountain.
Our guide told us that there would be some tough parts...steep steps and some rocks to climb over, then there would be a lot of switchbacks which were pretty level, and then a few more tough parts before the top. He totally lied. The whole thing was steep, and I mean steep steps and in many places it was hands & knees scrabbling-to-get-up-type of climbing.
I can’t even explain how tough it was. Everyone I saw, not just our group, but everyone else, was having an equally hard time, I have never seen so many red-faced, huffing and puffing people. They were vomiting; sitting and sobbing (well one puker and one cryer, but a thousand huffers & puffers)The good thing was, everyone was so supportive of everyone else. Anyone who passed us always gave encouraging comments, or asked if anyone needed help. People slower than us would happily move aside and cheer us on, as did we when others passed us. Our group broke up into 3, the first group were the ones who had just done Kilimanjaro, the second and third group were those of us who weren’t so experience and were a lot slower. I’ve never heard so many “Keep going!” And “You can do it!” and “We’re all in this together!” In so many different languages, it was amazing.
The higher we got, the further away the top got. I’m not kidding...I’d look up and my eyes couldn’t believe that the top never got closer...and the boulders got larger and the steps steeper. And when I say “steps”, I don’t mean actual stairs, I mean random hunks of mountain.
See that windy road waaaaay down there? (In the photo below)That’s where we started, and this picture is about halfway up only. I didn’t take anymore photos while climbing because I was literally too exhausted. I have never felt so horrible in my life; it was hot, I was short of breath, I felt nauseous, my knees and calves were burning. I could climb up 2 or 3 rocks and then I had to rest. My group was half above me and half below me, and as other people were coming down, they kept saying “Only 20 more minutes...keep going!” However, it was never only 20 minutes. It was eons and eons.
Eventually I saw “the pass”, which is the final gap in the mountain which opens to the top, and while it looked close, it took about another 1/2 hour and then I saw the top! Oh my god, I could have cried. And then I saw our guide, who told me to head towards the restaurant which was up another steep hill, which had chains that you needed to use to haul yourself up (my arms and legs were jelly by this point), but I managed.....and Hurrah! I was done! The view was spectacular....the feeling of accomplishment was stupendous, but I will never, ever do it again, and I highly recommend it to all of you. It wasn’t that bad, not really. 😉😉
The restaurant at the top. I had a relaxing sit-down and enjoyed the view.
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