Hiking, Hiking, Hiking, Helping!

On Tuesday, I had told people I would hike Lion's Head in the morning, and Table Mountain in the afternoon, and then realized I might as well add in Devil's Peak and go for the 3 peak challenge. So that's what I did.

A group of us started the day at 6:30 AM with a sunrise hike of Lion's Head. It was beautiful as always, and by 8:30 we were back down to Camps Bay and enjoying breakfast at Primi. 


After a quick refueling, Eric Stinehart and I continued with the next peak, Table Mountain. The legs were feeling a little sore, but once we got into it, the stair-master that is Platteklip Gorge didn't seem so bad, and we made it to the top in just 55 minutes. 

 

We had heard you could walk directly to Devil's Peak from the top of Table Mountain, and we spent an hour and a half at the top, in the biting cold wind looking for the trail. Unfortunately all we found was Maclear's Beaon, a triangulation station (big pile of rocks) and a muddy trail. It was cool exploring the top of Table Mountain, but the strong, cold wind made it a little miserable.



We eventually gave up on the direct path, made our way back to Platteklip and went down the way we had come up. Around 1 PM, we had made it back to the base of Table Mountain, and found the start of the Devil's Peak trail. The trail is quite diverse, starting off by going under rock overhangs and past dripping waterfalls, going into a sandy beach area, and then into thick forests. It was a steep ascent to the top, and when we cleared the peak, all of a sudden the wind was ridiculously powerful. We fought our way through to climb the rock that marked the tallest point, snapped a few photos, and retreated back down and out of the wind. 



We had made it! All 3 Cape Town peaks in just 9 hours (including an hour at breakfast). I returned to Camp's Bay, showered, laid down for about 5 minutes, and then got right back up and Ubered to the Watershed to meet Laura and some other iXers to volunteer at The Haven Shelter in Green Point. 

Over 90 people live in the shelter, and eat 3 meals a day there, and we were doing our small part to help dish and serve the curry and spaghetti dinner. There wasn't a ton for us to do, so when we had finished serving, we got to talk with some of the people there. I chatted with Patrick and Isaac about religion and fishing, Blessing offered to make me a piece of artwork, and Chris Brown pulled out his driver's license to prove his name actually is Chris Brown.

It was a nice night and nice to give back a little to the Cape Town community that has been so amazing to us.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Last Days in Cape Town

Image
My time in Africa is coming to a close, with my flight scheduled to depart Cape Town International Airport at 11:20 PM. It's been a beautiful last few days here - warm sun rays and clear blue skies, perfect for a walk along the ocean and a relaxing couple of hours at Clifton's 4th Beach. I've been saying my goodbyes for the last few days as people filter out, and had dinner last night with Zach and Brian. It's crazy that the 2 months at iXperience are already done, but honestly I am ready to get back home, and have been for a while now. It's been an absolutely incredible experience, and I am so glad I decided to come here to Cape Town, South Africa and check number one off of my list of places to visit, but now it's time to get back to the states. I still have a fun 6 weeks ahead of me before I start work and the RealWorld. From here it's on to D.C. (via Paris and NYC) to spend a week with Carol, then to L.A. to see a Giants-Dodgers game with my dad in Dod...
Read more

The Whiffenpoofs in Cape Town

Image
As part of their grand world tour, Yale's oldest and most famous a cappella group, the Whiffenpoofs, came to Cape Town last week. I was under the impression that they had concerts in each city they visited, but it turns out that they perform very little on the trip aside from informal jam sessions for their hotel staff and guests as payment for their rooms. So, I didn't get to see them sing live but I did meet up with a few of them.  I interned with one of the Whiffenpoofs, Seth McNay, last summer at AV&Co. and when I found out a few months ago that he would be in Cape Town the same time as me we made plans to meet up. Last Friday the day had finally come, and we, along with a few other Whiffenpoofs, Wade and Michael, met at the base of Lion's Head to hike and catch up. It was a beautiful afternoon to hike, clear skies and relatively warm air, and (after failing to find Walley's cave) we made it to the top just in time for another incredible sunset. We talked ab...
Read more

Younglings All Grown Up

Image
I wen t into the Longkloof Ba rclays' Aliens office for the final time yesterday, since Alwyn was on holiday again today, to finalize my projects and say goodbye to my co-workers. I honestly feel really lucky to have had the opportunity to work at Aliens, as the internship really had the best of all worlds - an interesting project with huge potential to impact many people positively, cool colleagues, flexible hours, and of course, free lunch. Here, I'm going to recap the work I did in the internship, similar to my post on RealWorld . As I said in my original post on Younglings a few weeks back, I was working on the "Youth Employment Pipeline project, designing and beginning to implement changes to the Younglings program that seeks to recruit tee nagers interested in technology, particularly those outside of the formal education system, teach them how to code, and set them up with a job from which they can launch their career as a software engineer." My main g...
Read more