Table Mountain

Look at any picture of the Cape Town landscape, and you cannot miss it--Table Mountain towers over the city and is a beautiful juxtaposition to the violent Atlantic Ocean surrounding the cape. I had been told by so many people, past tourists, Captonians, and other South Africas, that you just can NOT go to Cape Town and not climb up Table Mountain. Past students in the program even advocated taking off days of work when the weather was beautiful to go. Any many students in the program did just that. But just about everyday someone skipped work to go, I felt obligated to go to work for some reason or another. So it came down to last weekend, and there was still a group of 5 of us who had not climbed. The weather was said to be iffy, but we decided we'd aim for climbing on Saturday.

Well, mother nature must have known how badly we wanted to climb, and left us with a gorgeous day. There was some light fog covering the middle of the mountain, but the traditional "tablecloth" covering the top of the mountain wasn't in sight. We received approval to climb from another climber who gave us some tips and we were off!

Tim & I led the pack and we all had such a blast climbing. We took our leisurely time and made it to the summit in about 1hr 40minutes. Even though there were low-lying stratus clouds, the view was remarkable and definitely worth the wait.

Halfway to the summit

Ashley & Tim at the top of the mountain

Lion's Head and Signal Hill - Sea Point is on the other side of Signal Hill
(and I thought the hike up Lion's head was a tough one!)

Cape Town City Bowl

View up Table Mountain after we took the Cable Car down to the base...