Frank in Africa ‘08

sooo after we arrived in Capetown me and Beer somehow managed to free up a day (an afternoon) so he could go surf, and I could climb the mountain I see when I talk out of the door of the house each morning, It’s not table mountain, it’s 1 of the peaks next to it, it might be called “devils peak” but I’m not sure.

So at 11:30AM or so I was finally ready to go, I had packed everything I needed (first aid, photo camera and video camera). I walked down the street to the Kwik Spar or whatever the grocery store is called, and got some Water, Coke, Orange Juice, Mars bars and some other snacks, I felt like I had everything I needed so I headed straight to the mountain.

After walking for a bit there was this huge hospital (good to know in case something would happen) followed by a lot of fences and 2 big busy roads which I couldn’t cross. So I started walking a different direction, following the road, hoping I could cross it somewhere. I walked passed the Capetown University and through a not so safe looking part of town (which you can estimate by the amount of drunken people on the streets before noon). After a good hour of walking the wrong direction I finally managed to cross the road, there was this strange dutch mill at the start of the crossing, which felt really out of place.

After walking up hill for about 20 minutes (through a pine tree forest, which smelled like you’d expect it to) I realised how sick I was, there was slime everywhere and I started to think about going back because at the speed I was walking/climbing and with all the slime I started to get trouble breathing. So I stopped… for a while… and drank some water… I found out that the water I had got at the grocery store wasn’t water at all, it was honey mellon flavoured water, gross… but I had no choice, I had to drink it…

I decided to keep going and soon after starting to walk again I had to stop because of a big fence that was in my way, I followed the fence uphill and it soon ended. There were 2 african men chilling under a dead tree (there were a lot of burned down and fallen down trees) and for a moment I got worried about the equipment in my bag and what could happen. but nothing happened, and I continued.

From that point on “nature” really started, lots of small bushes, and small plants with spikes/thorns, there were a lot of different smells around, and a lot of birds and small lizards shooting under rocks and dead trees. at first there was just 1 small path uphill but later on looking down I noticed there were lots of bigger paths all over the place, and it looked like the path I was on was the steepest of them all.

After another hour of walking I came across an old fort, with a bunch of old cannons, the fun thing was that the fort was covered in radio antennas and satelite dishes, I looked at the view for a while, had a snack and took some pictures. you could see the whole city and the coast with the harbour.

I spend most of the day walking around on that mountain, over small man made paths and stairs, and managed to get from 1 side to the other, from where I could see table mountain and the carpet of clouds flowing over the top, which looked pretty impressive.

I had to hurry back because it was getting late, and I got home just before dark, everything was fine and I felt like I had a great day, even though there wasnt a single muscle in my body that didn’t hurt

Tags: South Africa //