Top o' Cape Town, Ma!
Table Mountain. Almost everywhere you look in Cape Town, it's lurking in the background. It's highest point is 1086 meters (3563 feet) above sea level, and just begs to be climbed. The most straightforward way up is a steep 3 kilometer (1.9 miles)-long path that takes at least 2½ hours to do. Due to mugging concerns, signs also advise doing the hike with at least three other people. With my wife and daughter along on this trip, climbing to the top of Table Mountain was clearly out of the question. Fortunately, there's the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway.
The day we chose to visit the mountain (Thursday) turned out to be the best day for doing so in terms of the weather. Which is probably why a lot of other people had the same idea that morning - I had to drop the girls off in front of the cableway station, then drive almost a kilometer back down Tafelberg Road before finding a place to park the Yaris. At least the walk back uphill to where Amber and Shu-E were waiting in line gave an indication of the views to come:
Looking toward Lion's Head:
Looking up at the aerial cableway:
Even though we had purchased tickets online, it was still a 90-minute wait before we reached the top of the mountain:
The cable car approaches that would take us to the upper cableway station. I've ridden on many aerial gondolas in my life, but this was the first one that rotates as it makes its way up and down:
The view from the top after exiting the upper cableway station. What follows is an overkill of photos documenting the vistas looking down onto Cape Town and its environs as the three of us started walking in a roughly southernly direction:
Lion's Head. In the distance is Robben Island, home to the former prison where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for 18 of the 27 years he spent behind bars:
The birds at the top are obviously used to human visitors, and were quite willing to be photographed:
Eventually we reached as far as we could go in one direction, and so turned west toward the Atlantic Ocean:
Looking down on Camps Bay, where we had stopped the previous day on our way back from wine tasting:
Lunch break at the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Cafe:
It's possible to go abseiling while you're up there. No thank you:
The last moments at the top...:
...and then it was back onto the cable car for the trip down to the lower cableway station (video courtesy of my wife):
Central Cape Town as we made our way back to the parked car:
One more glance up at Table Mountain:
How do you top (no pun intended) one of the finest views in the world? You don't. But it was too early to call it a day and go back to the hotel, so we drove to Long Street, a commercial and nightlife area lined with Victorian-era buildings. Amber and I had a look around Clarke's Bookshop (where I picked up a copy of The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire by Alan Palmer)...:
...while Shu-E did some souvenir shopping a few doors down:
We ended the day back at the V&A Waterfront:
Dinner ended on another South African note at Karibu Restaurant. I had the Devil's Peak, consisting of boerewors, a lamb chop and a fillet sosatie:
One could get used to this life:
The sun sets behind (where else?) Table Mountain:
This would have been a good way to end our trip, but because this was South Africa, there was more scenery to come...
No comments:
Post a Comment