Hiking Around Cape Town

Week 34

Day 232

Cape Town South Africa

33.9253° S, 18.4239° E

Big Bay may have been the relaxing retreat Tom and I both needed, but since we’ve moved into Cape Town City proper there have been nothing but adventures!

Our first night in town we headed to a Cape Town VS. New South Wales Rugby match.

Given that every Rugby Match we’ve attended together the home team has lost, Tom and I are starting to feel as if we are bad luck. :/

The next day we headed out with one of our new roommates to go wine tasting in Stellenbosch.

Staying in the southern part of the Stellenbosch region this time near Somerset West we had even more spectacular views than before because rather than being in the mountains they made a beautiful backdrop, especially with leaves changing color for fall.

We hit up Lourensford and Vergelgen before heading home.

Vergaelgen was a pretty standard estate, beautiful property with tasty wines, but Lourensford was our favorite as it had a chocolate pairing tasting as well as their own artisan coffee shop on the property.

2 days into our stay in Cape Town we conquered Table Mountain, the landscape we had been looking at and photographing for the past month!

I didn’t expect the walk to be easy, but I also didn’t expect it to be as difficult as it was.

Not only was the entire walk straight uphill, (by straight uphill I mean the path was composed of rocks that have been mildly manipulated to create giant steps taller than my knees) but it was also a super hot day.  Since we moved in from Big Bay, Cape Town has been in a rare heat wave (this should be late fall).  We’ve had temps at 35ºC+ and the path offered very little shade.

We are proud to say we summited in 1 hour and 13 minutes and the 365º views didn’t disappoint!

The great thing about this hike is despite it’s intensity, when you get to the top there is a bomb cafe.  An hour later after some water, coffee, and a bomb buffet breakfast we continued to explore the trails on top of the mountain for a couple hours.

Here’s what we found:

The other unique trait of Table Mountain is the cable car it has running up and down from the summit.

The downside to the cable car is it does make this beautiful nature reserve swarmed with tourists, but the tourists really only stay on the Western half of the mountain.

We were actually planning to take the cable car down so that we could use our energy to explore the Eastern half, but as we were walking past the trail head we decided we had to walk down to fully conquer this mountain.

I think everyone toys with the idea of taking the cable car down, but the problem with this option is once you’re down you’ll still have a 2km walk back to the trail head to retrieve your car.

It may not have been a race down, but we made it.  As Tom says, “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast!”

The next day we decided to stretch our sore legs by walking from our Apartment to the top of Signal Hill for the sunset.

Not nearly as hard, but close to as rewarding as there is also a beautiful view from Signal Hill.

This past week, we met up with my childhood friend, Maureen and her bud from Spain, Monica.

We’ve had a blast grabbing some epic dinners at Mama’s Africa where we ended up dancing with the band.

And Marco’s Africa where we tried some township beer called Mqomboti…which I highly don’t recommend trying!

The best part of our time (thus far) with Mo and Monica was our out the Cape of Good Hope

The day started out with breakfast at Kulk Bay.

Breakfast took a little longer than we expected, because as we’ve learned things definitely run on South African time around here, but it was worth the wait.

An hour later we were off and shortly wading our way through the water at Boulder Beach in search for Penguins!

Penguins successfully found we continued on our adventure to the Cape of Good Hope.

After spending 20 min or so taking in the views we continued through the park for the real reason we came, to trek the Thomas T. Tucker Ship Wreck trail.

Shortly past the parking lot, we spotted our first Baboon!

Stopping to take pictures of what we thought was a rare site we accidently left our car door open.

Within a minute the baboon and her baby had climbed in the car, grabbed the package of chips we had sitting in the backseat and parked herself on the side of the road to enjoy her snack.

Laughing at the funny site we got back out of the car to finish our photo sess.

While I was busy snapping away I failed to notice the heard of Baboons that had crept our way and were surrounding the car.

Once we were all safely in the car the entire situation became incredibly funny, but I’d be lying if I said my heart rate didn’t start pumping out of my chest.

Continuing down the road it wasn’t long before we caught site of these amazing creatures:

After the Zebra we spotted some pretty cool Antelope

and some Ostrich!

We finally made it to the hike and that didn’t disappoint either.

Not only did we find the ship wreck,

 

but we also had a gorgeous walk on a nice white sandy beach…

and we found more baboons!

Driving back, we spotted one more little creature walking across the road.

No better way to end this epic day than with some wine tasting so we headed to Cape Point Vineyards which boasts a beautiful view of the coast.

Obviously that day was pretty epic, but normal life in Greenpoint where we are living is pretty bomb as well.

We have a great view from our window, a gourmet grocery store one block away, and attached to it is a wine store that does tastings daily!

I’m a 25 min walk from yoga, we’re a 15 minute walk from church, and Tom has a desk in our room to really knock some work out before the next couple weeks of travel through Namibia and our Safari in Pilansburg.

As you can see we could really get used to life here.

We are loving life in Cape Town, but starting to get excited for the rest of our adventures!

To everyone at home who’s posted pics of the Tulip festival in Mount Vernon, (the true one!  sorry my Holland, MI peeps 😉 ) I’m loving them!  Thank you for a little taste of home!

Until next time!

Cheers!