…is 2 PB&J sandwiches and a 5 hour hike up a mountain.
That second night was an interesting one, to say the least! Katrina, Pat, John and I went wandering around the port area barhopping looking for a cool place to spend the evening. We ended up at this bar/dance/rugby place called the Tequila Cantina. Needless to say, it sounded hopeful :) The people there were all watching rugby and the bar was practically divided down the middle between the two teams, and as the token Americans, we were pulled left and right as they tried to convert us football fanatics into knowledgeable rugby fans (didn’t work, but it was fun!) A couple hours into it, Kat and I were dancing in an open area and this guy came up and buys us a couple margaritas (it’s good to be a girl!). The three of us got to talking about South Africa and what they thought of Americans, and what it was like for him growing up white in the post-Apartheid era. It was very interesting to hear his views. His parents had been raised to hate and fear the blacks, and he admitted that he was racist sometimes too, though he is trying to get over it.
We had a healthy buzz going on as we made our way back to the ship…however, we conveniently forgot that we were supposed to hike Table Mountain the next day – oops…
I went to bed about 2am-ish and woke up at 7:30 to Katie pounding on the door. “You’re not going to waste today in bed! I don’t care how hungover you are! This might be the only chance we get to be in Cape Town and we’re gonna climb that mountain!” Katie can be pretty persistent when she wants to be.
Using the same argument, we got Kat out of bed and dressed and we all trudged to the caf for some breakfast. Still hungover, I couldn’t bear any eggs or bacon, so I made a PB&J on toast, and two more for the hike. And we’re off!
The hike up Table Mountain was absolutely amazing. On the advice of our cabbie, we took a trail called Skeleton Gorge that, as we found out later, not even many native Cape Towners know about or take because it’s one of the longest and most difficult trails. Go figure, but we like a challenge! Plus it was a beautiful day. We had to scramble up rockkslides with rivers flowing through that were almost vertical and in some places ladders had been built because it was so steep and they wanted to preserve the trail. We’d sometimes look up and see the top of the ridge only to find, once we got there, that it keeps going up. Finally, 5 hours later, we reached the top! The view from up there was completely worth the trek . It was just incredible and it felt so good to accomplish that hike. As a reward for our hard work, we took the cable car down :)
