Sunrise over Cape Town
On the Internet I found this group of hikers, that invited me to come along on a hike on Sunday morning. We met up on the parking lot on Kloofnec at 7.45 am, right after the turn off to the Cable Car going up Table Mountain, which I found perfectly in my new wheels, and as a matter of fact it took me only 15min from Kirstenbosch. Distances aren’t very great here, as long as you have a car, otherwise this would have easily taken me anywhere from 1 – 1 1/2 hours!
A lively group of about 8 over 50 year olds was meeting there, and we carpooled from there to Camps Bay. One of them turned out to be a Rucksack Deutscher (=second generation German) from Namibia, and another guy was a true ‘Biederman’ from Mainz/Germany, a Math and IT teacher at the Cape Town German School, where he is with family for a 8-year contract. One of the women was a really bitchy maniac, and another kept mentioning a recent trip to Dubai, and her brother who is currently in Tokyo for the G-8 meeting (!!). Not really my kind of people under normal circumstances, but maybe therefore even more interesting to listen in to their stories and comments relating to this place and the people.
There are a lot of trails on this mountain, so I can’t tell you which one exactly we took. They started out with quite a fast pace which should have tipped me off right away, but instead of slowing into a more reasonable speed when we got to the very steep climb, they just kept running even faster! It turned out they were a bunch of exercise maniacs that wanted to be back down for a late breakfast!! Well, that was not exactly what I had in mind, especially on a gorges day like this, and in this absolute fantastic landscape with mind blowing incredible views. Plus I am in good shape, but not like this. It was very cold and super windy up on the plateau (I saw some ice!), but if one would have wanted to, you could have found a spot to rest and really take it all in. So I did what I could keeping up with them, and basically made lots of mental notes of things to come back to and look at again another day.
But it is fun to go out and test what I have absorbed of the flora so far – actually more then I thought! And to see all these Proteas growing on these steep rocky slopes...and everybody is talking about the colors coming soon in spring (starting August), really feeds into the expectations.
Rest of the day I enjoyed zapping around town, and explored some more of the coast.
A lively group of about 8 over 50 year olds was meeting there, and we carpooled from there to Camps Bay. One of them turned out to be a Rucksack Deutscher (=second generation German) from Namibia, and another guy was a true ‘Biederman’ from Mainz/Germany, a Math and IT teacher at the Cape Town German School, where he is with family for a 8-year contract. One of the women was a really bitchy maniac, and another kept mentioning a recent trip to Dubai, and her brother who is currently in Tokyo for the G-8 meeting (!!). Not really my kind of people under normal circumstances, but maybe therefore even more interesting to listen in to their stories and comments relating to this place and the people.
There are a lot of trails on this mountain, so I can’t tell you which one exactly we took. They started out with quite a fast pace which should have tipped me off right away, but instead of slowing into a more reasonable speed when we got to the very steep climb, they just kept running even faster! It turned out they were a bunch of exercise maniacs that wanted to be back down for a late breakfast!! Well, that was not exactly what I had in mind, especially on a gorges day like this, and in this absolute fantastic landscape with mind blowing incredible views. Plus I am in good shape, but not like this. It was very cold and super windy up on the plateau (I saw some ice!), but if one would have wanted to, you could have found a spot to rest and really take it all in. So I did what I could keeping up with them, and basically made lots of mental notes of things to come back to and look at again another day.
But it is fun to go out and test what I have absorbed of the flora so far – actually more then I thought! And to see all these Proteas growing on these steep rocky slopes...and everybody is talking about the colors coming soon in spring (starting August), really feeds into the expectations.
Rest of the day I enjoyed zapping around town, and explored some more of the coast.
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