Cape Town- From the top of Table Mountain...

Hello Everyone,

 

Our first few days on the African continent have been good ones.  We met our German friend Carsten and his mom who is traveling with him.  He was very, very happy to see Ozell who is a very good friend of his and vice versa.  He says that traveling with his mother has been frustrating at times because she does not speak English and demands that Carsten do immediate translations for her.  Carsten is fluent in a few languages and proficient at a couple of others, but his mind has a hard time switching back and forth between languages in the middle of a conversation.  In fact, when we were with them for dinner last night, he asked us to please try to converse in German.  Our German sucks so he finally had to do a fair amount of translating which I thought he handled pretty well.

 

We went to the top of Table Mountain yesterday via cable car.  Table Mountain is a UN World Heritage Site and an iconic back drop to this city.  It is very recognizable because it looks like its name suggests- a table top.  It is also a South African national park because it is thought to be one of the oldest mountains in the world- they claim something like 3 times older than the Himalayas and 6 times older than the Rockies.  I know the Rockies were young, but I thought I had read or was told that the Appalachians were the oldest or very old mountains.  They were once higher than the Rockies in their youth, but their rounded hills and lower height has been due to tens of millions of years worth of erosion.  Anyways, Table Mountain is iconic and the view from the top is fantastic!

 

The ride up the cable car was also neat because floor of the car rotates 360 degrees as you go up or come down.  This allows everyone in the car to see all of the different views.  The floor can rotate because the cars are circular in the horizontal and elliptical in the vertical.  This very rounded shape is for aerodynamic purposes because of the high winds that are often experienced here on the Cape.  In fact, this has been the windiest place we have been on our trip by far.  Even though the weather has been very clear each day, the winds are very gusty and always present. 

 

At first we didn't know if Cape Town was a polluted city or not.  It is home to 3 million people so it is large enough to have a fair amount of car or industrial pollution, but I do not think that is it.  The skies are pretty clear, but it has been hazy which you could definitely see from the top of the mountain.  However, I think it the haze is due to mainly dirt and smoke.  The landscape is similar to southern California, but even more deserty.  With the high winds, there is a lot of sand and dirt in the air.  Also like California, they had to contend with brush fires the last few days.  In fact, the mountain was closed two days ago because of the fires on the backside.  You can see a localized fire in the pics from the top of Table Mountain attached to this blog.  There has also been a fair amount of smoke in the air.  So even though the air quality has not been the best here, I do not think it is due to car or industrial pollution.

 

The top of the mountain is allegedly one of the most diverse areas of plant life for the size of the area on earth.  At first, I did not believe that claim since as we were walking around, I thought most of the plants consisted of a handful of types.  Upon closer inspection, however, I did notice much more diversity.  I still don't think I believe the claim, but there were many interesting plants that I had not seen before.  We made a loop walk/hike around the top of the mountain.  Off the back side you can see the "Twelve Apostles" which are faces of a long rock ridge which heads down the cape peninsula.  You could also see multiple towns and bays on either side of the ridge.  We had dinner at one of the bays near Cape Town called Camp Bay.  It was a very wealthy conclave of Cape Town that is ten times nicer than La Jolla in San Diego.  Dinner can be for another post...

 

We then headed out to the other end of Table Mountain to a spot called McClear's Beacon.  It is a pile of rocks that served as a fire beacon once but mainly was a geodetic survey point for the first English surveyor to survey the Cape.  Unfortunately, we heard the 'high wind warning' siren coming from the cable car station.  We were instructed that you should immediately return to the station if you want the cable car down to the lower station because they would be closing the station due to high winds.  It is possible to hike up and down the mountain, but mainly off the backside far from town.  Ozell and I were not prepared for that type of hike.  Plus, I am not sure what the trail would be like and whether it would have been something Ozell could have managed.  In fact, we took the other leg of the loop trail back to the station, and there were definitely some parts that literally hugged the vertical ridge of the mountain with sheer drop-offs of over 2000 feet.  We did make it back to the station in time to catch the last cable car down. 

 

Speaking of the high winds, they say the weather on top of the mountain can change in a matter of minutes- not unlike other mountainous areas I have been.  The weather stayed pretty clear until the end, but the winds were fierce the entire time.  We both had jackets with us, but those did little to protect our ears and faces.  It was a good 20 degrees cooler on the top of the mountain also.

 

But the views of Cape Town were spectacular.  If it were as green as Rio instead of arid, then I would say the spot for this city is as pretty as I have seen.  (I used Rio as an example because they are similar in how mountains rise out of the see.  I have seen other beautiful settings for cities like La Paz, Bolivia were the city fills and lines the gorge carved into a flat plain.)

 

Check out the pics when we have the chance to upload them.  The one attached will have to suffice for now.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean