South Africa Trip - Day 4

Still J.R. and now day 4. What a day. We thought that we were going to take the day to do all the nature-type things that we could. We were going to climb up Table Mountain and then head over to Lion's Head to watch the sun set.

We heard from Tessa that the climb up Table Mountain wasn't going to be too bad. She told us that it's an easy climb that could be done in about 3-5 hours. Then we heard from Judy that it's REALLY easy, that she climbs it all the time with her dog and that it shouldn't take much longer than an hour to finish.

They were both REALLY WRONG!!! We got to Table Mountain at Kirstenbosch at 10:00 in the morning. After looking around the base at the botanical gardens for about 15 minutes, we headed up the mountain on Skeleton Gorge.

We saw a lot of really cool things! The trail started out as a nice gravel road that wasn't too inclined. Then it got to a slightly inclined trail that consisted of wooden steps mixed in with dirt and rocks. At about this point, some of us started getting slightly tired. Since Judy had told us that it should only take slightly over an hour to get to the top, we pressed on since we had already been going for 45 minutes.

After about an hour and 15 minutes, we finally got to the ladders. If you've been reading the news, a 13 year old Houston kid died while hiking this trail. The area where he fell was shown in the news, and I think this is where the ladders were. Good to know we were about to take on the same ladders :(

So we continued up the ladders which we thought were going to be the end of the trail and the top of the mountain. Boy, were we wrong. The trail continued up through the river running down the mountain. We had to climb through the river, up steep, wet rocks. Once we got through the river, we got to a flatter area where we could see down the mountain. We took some good pictures and continued on.

After about 2 hours, we got to the first marker. It told us that we had just finished Skeleton gorge. Our plan was to take the cable car down the mountain and a taxi home. So we found out that there was still a 3 hour hike to get to the cable cars. So we pressed on taking a slight detour to a reservoir at the top of Skeleton Gorge. It was crazy because it was a lake at the top of the mountain with a sandy beach. We took some more pictures and continued on to the cable cars.

At this point, we were cursing the world for telling us that this was a good idea. We are pretty out of shape and we thought this was going to be an easy adventure to tackle. We were completely wrong. We finally got to the top of the mountain that was marked with a beacon after about 6 hours of hiking.

From here, we were told that it was a short walk to the cable cars, so we kept on. We walked for another hour before we got to the cars to take us down. When we finally got there, we found out that there was a line to take the cars down (since most tourists just go up the cars, take some pictures, then go right back down). The line ended up taking another hour to get through. When we finally got to the car, we were pissed to hear that we would have to stand to get down the mountain.

All in all, our hiking adventure ended up taking about 8 hours. We were so tired by the end of the hike that we decided to come home, order pizza and watch the Mexico vs. France game. That's what i'm doing right now and I'm watching Jenn, Ank, and Brian sleep through the game.

Anyways... we have an early night planned for today. Tomorrow, we're going to try to go to an aquarium, visit some museums, watch the US play Slovenia, then go to the England, Algeria game. Should be a good day! Talk to you tomorrow.