Christmas Ass-Kicking

(Disclaimer: I realize I’m WAY far behind on blog updates and pretty much skipped all entries about one of my favorite countries in the world – Namibia.  Once I’m done tourist-izing Cape Town, I plan to get back on that…)

Christmas.  I’m not particularly religious (read: not religious at all), so I’m not one of those people that gets all freaked out and bent out of shape if I don’t have something planned.  However, being that many places - be it businesses or entire cities - shut down to celebrate one of the world’s biggest holidays, you need to think outside the box to keep yourself entertained.  Such was the case yesterday in Cape Town.  Africa as a whole is very religious, Christianity being the backbone throughout most of the places I’ve traveled so far.  Hence, my options for what to do for Xmas consisted of not leaving my apartment* to read the rest of my book**, go to the beach, or climb Table Mountain.  My new Aussie/Dutch/American friend Ginger and I debated over beach vs. TM, but TM won out as it’s pretty much a must-do while here. 

We had talked about doing a little wine & cheese picnic thingy up top and envisioned a totally cute little Christmas afternoon overlooking the city and being one with nature.  We should have known things weren’t going to go as planned after hopping on one of the most hilariously ridiculous minivan taxi rides up to the trailhead.  Picture a heap of scrap metal with wheels glued on.  We couldn’t help but laugh each time we stalled out on a hill and the driver had to e-brake it, turn the damn thing off, on again and slam the petal to the ground to get this POS to lurch forward for the next 30ft before repeating the process. 

Finally we made it to the trailhead and set off up Platteklip Gorge.  After 20 minutes of hiking we realized that Table Mountain is a bitch.  We really underestimated her rocky slopes and the gale force winds we’d be faced with.

Long story short, Ginger and I basically threw ourselves into the neverending stairmaster from hell in which the 2 hour ascent consisted of us lobbing our legs up each behemoth step, repeating how we were not expecting this, praying that the wind would die down enough for the cable car to re-open service for the way down and asking “why don’t they tell people it’s this hard”?  

Finally we managed to hoist our out-of-shape selves to the top where the wind was howling.  I’m talking to the point where you’d have to catch your balance after each gust.  Thankfully the views were totally worth the effort.   Cape Town is probably one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever been to and seeing it from the top of a mountain was way cool.  We walked around, took some photos, awed at the type of footwear decisions people make for hiking (think leather business shoes) and managed to find a little sheltered cove to set up our picnic where we nourished up before our hike back down.   

Before setting off on our descent we longingly looked at the cable car station at the base of the mountain wishing we had the option of taking the luxurious 5min ride down, all the while well aware that the stairmaster of death was awaiting us.  The next hour-ish hike down consisted of much the same conversation as the hike up: this is nuts, I was expecting a trail not a monster staircase and why don’t they warn people about this?  Now that we've successfully made it down, I may have to start looking into prosthetics because I’m sure I just lost 20 years off my knees.

Despite the struggle, we were totally good-natured about it and laughing at ourselves the entire way.   It really was a great day and if anyone asks me what I did for Christmas 2010, I can tell them I got my ass kicked by Table Mountain.

*I’m lucky enough to be staying at a friend of a friend of a friend’s super cute apartment in Sea Point

**I’m halfway through book 2 of the Millenium series and am thoroughly hooked.