I went to the top of Table Mountain on my second day in Cape Town.

That time I took the cable car.  It was a great day with clear blues sky and no wind.  The cable car itself is interesting in itself.  As it moves it rotates 360 degrees.  This enables everyone to have an equal opportunity to enjoy the views.

The top of the mountain is, as you would expect, very flat.  It is also quite wide, at least 500 metres across.  I spent about 2 hours walking around checking out the various viewing points.  It is a very spectacular place.

German girls wanted to walk to the Top

My plan was always to walk to the top of the mountain.  There were a few days when the top was covered in cloud and/or, it was too windy for the cable car to operate.  The non-operation of the cable is an issue in that, although I was confident of being able to climb up the mountain, I was certainly not confidential that my old knees would be able to cope with the walk down.

The staff at the hostel always wanted to know what people were doing.  Part of that was to put groups of people together.  It most cases this was for safety reasons.

When I told me that I was planning to walk up the mountain, they told me that there were three German girls that were also planning to climb the mountain on that day. We formed a group.

One of the girls had been using Uber.  She ordered a car and we headed off to foot of the mountain.  The 20-minute drive ended up costing up 80 Rand (less than AUD 8) – amazingly good value.

The Walk

The first part of the climb was a two kilometre walk from the bottom cable car station along a road to the start of the walking track.  As we walked I found out a bit about the German girls.  Two were friends from Hamburg.  One wasn’t feeling too good as a result of a heavy cold.  The other, older girl, was from Munich and told us the she was an experienced ‘trekker’.

A sign marks that start the walking track to the top via Plattwklip Gorge.  The sign advised that it took one hour to get to the gorge and another hour to get to the summit.

We hadn’t gone far when it became obvious that the two younger girls were struggling.  In particular, the girl who wasn’t feeling too good, was finding it really tough.  There was a lot of chatting in German.  The older girl told me that she had advised the others “simply take their time and walk at their own pace and that we would meet them at the top”.

As we headed off, it was clear that the older girl was really “an experienced trekker”.  Actually she could have given a mountain goat a run for its money.  I really struggled to keep up and decide to go at my own pace.

There were a lot of people on the track.  It was notable that even after over thirty minutes, no one was heading down – everyone was heading up.  Spurred long by the “experienced trekker”, I was overtaking other walkers and didn’t look like being overtaken by anyone else.

As it turned out, I was never more than 20 metres or so behind my pace maker.  At various points she stopped to wait for me.  At one point she stopped to chat with an English couple who were resting a shady spot.  This was a good idea, given the strong sun.  The couple were hilarious – they were arguing like ‘cat and dog’.  The wife was blaming the husband for “forcing [her] to climb up this impossible track…..he must have known how difficult it was and why didn’t he tell her………”.  He completely ignored her and when he heard that I was Australian he  simply what to ask about my thoughts on rugby and cricket.   This infuriated his wife.  My German companion tried to calm things down by saying she thought that “the track would get easier further along”.

As we left that arguing couple, I asked my companion what made her think that the “track would get easier”.  She told that it would probably get “more difficult”.  I did say anymore.

Finally at the Top

After two hours we were finally at the top.  I was wearing my FitBit.  I noted that it calculated that I had walked up 240 storeys.  I assumed that was about right, however it seemed lot more than that to me.

We wandered around the top of the mountain for a while.  At one of the viewing points, we came across for English girls who were doing handstands.  They asked us to photograph them.  They were ‘cards’.  They were travelling together and had decided to be photographed doing handstands at the all the ‘tourist spots’.

The German girl was keen to wait to make sure her countrywomen made it to the top safely.  We stopped off in the summit café for a beer. A couple of South Africa ‘lads’ joined us.  They didn’t pick our table because they saw me.  A rather interesting conversation ensued.  They were intrigued why we had walked up the mountain together.

Other Girls Make it

After about 30 minutes later my companion received an SMS.  The other German girls had made it to the top and were at the cable car station.  Slow and steady does work.

We took to cable car to the bottom.

Flickr Link

https://www.flickr.com/gp/twwilko_photos/TTwgB3