JDs in Africa: Devil's Peak

Hello all -- especially my parents, who probably think I'm dead!

I got in two mornings ago, as Andrew mentioned in his last post. My first day we walked around Cape Town, heading from the hostel to the Waterfront and hanging out there. The next day we planned to climb Table Mountain, Cape Town's signature topographic signpost, the huge plateau that serves as the backdrop for the city bowl. We got directions from the travel guide at the hostel, picked up bread, fruit, PB & J at a local grocery store, and headed up the mountain. We walked up an extremely steep road from our hostel (just to say we walked all the way up the mountain from sea level to the top!) to get to the Table Mountain cable car. We walked another half an hour or so till we got to the base of the path, then headed up "Table Mountain." Scare quotes, you ask? Yeah.

We took a wrong turn about 10 minutes into the hike and headed up Devil's Peak (a fact we wouldn't discover until much later in the day). Turns out Devil's Peak isn't quite the tourist-friendly path we were expecting. After hiking up rocks in the hot sun for a couple of hours, we stopped for an apple-and-peanut-butter break (delicious) and kept going, ending up at an extremely steep and very narrow path that was almost entirely obscured with vegetation. The path got so steep at times that we were crawling up the mountain on our hands and knees (and those of you who know me will know how totally thrilled I was about this -- I have referred in my life a number of times to my "Darwinian sense of caution" and this wasn't exactly the leisurely hike I was expecting). Just about the time I was considering screaming at the boys for taking me up this godforsaken path when I looked down and saw a lone hiker climbing the mountain by himself. We chatted with him for a bit and he decided to come up the mountain with us -- his name was Lance and he was hiking alone. About half an hour later, we summitted Devil's Peak (I'll try to add some pictures when I'm done with this blog) and I was feeling really proud of myself. It hadn't been much time before one of the other guys on the mountain looked out over the looming clouds and told us not to wait around much longer. We took a few pictures and started back down, thinking that our trip down would be easier than the trip up. WRONG! It took us a long time to get down and it was quite difficult on our old knees.

Justin and Lance ran off ahead and Andrew kindly and patiently waited with me while I struggled down the mountain (half the time doing the crabwalk, scooting down the rocks on my butt to keep from tumbling down into the clouds -- sorry mom!), but it was actually a lot of fun. When we ran out of water, we filled up our bottles at a clear stream (then somehow managed to convince Andrew that we saw another hiker peeing at the top of the stream -- he believed us for a few minutes but didn't seem to care) ;) and continued the rest of the way down, stopping for PB&J on the way. It was pretty cold hiking through the clouds, and I had given Justin my hoodie (hysterically funny pictures to follow) to protect his delicate little skin from the sun, but we managed to make it all the way down. That night, we went out to a nice dinner at a fancy restaurant in Cape Town, Shogan. We had a great time, and headed out to the bars that night where Lance met up with us and told us lots of stories of all the girls he'd met in Cape Town (most of them while climbing Table Mountain ...). Justin and I left early and the boys went out and had a great time -- until 3 am ;) More to come about today's adventures heading down the cape!

Devil's Peak -- the mountain we accidentally climbed