Saturday, April 20, 2019 - Rode Cable Car to the Top of Table Mountain

Today's first stop was riding the cable car to the top of Table Mountain to view Cape Town.  Table Mountain is the most iconic landmark of South Africa. It is the scenic photography background of Cape Town, and it is also a place where you can take breathtaking photos of Cape Town.  The only problem we had was that it was raining in the morning.  The cable car was operational, so our guide took us to ride it to the top and hoping the sky will be cleared up soon.  Unfortunately, it never did.  Therefore, we did not see anything when we were up there.

After the Table Mountain, our tour bus went through Cape Town to visit City Hall, Malay Quarter and Company Garden. Then, we stopped at V&A Waterfront to visit the Shimansky Jewelers & Museum  South Africa is famous with their diamond discovery. Some of our tour members bought diamonds there.  Then we had leisure time for the afternoon.

We checked with our tour guide earlier in regarding to climbing up Table Mountain the next day (at leisure day).  Due to forecast of strong wind, our tour guide suggested us to do it in the afternoon instead of the next day.  We followed his advice and took a taxi to the trail head of Table Mountain.  We were pretty lucky that the sky cleared up in the earlier afternoon.  We chose the Platteklip Gorge Trail for our hike.  Normally it takes about 2 hours for people to climb up to the top, however, it took us 3 hours to do it.  On the way to climb up there, the scenery was just breathtaking.  We stopped many times to take pictures of the trail and Cape Town.  

During the climb, Fei was effortless, however Tony was huffing and puffing.  We thought the 2 cameras Tony was carry might have something to do with it. We had the whole afternoon to do this, therefore we just took easy to enjoy the scenery and the climbing.  

Right before we got close to the top, we ran into a young couple coming down the mountain.  The girl hurt her leg and was trying to sit and move slowly down at each step.  Judging the time and the difficulty of climbing down, we suggested to them to get back to the top (much shorter climb) and ride the cable car down.  To our surprise that they left their wallets in the car parked in the parking lot, and do not have cash to buy cable car tickets fo get down the mountain.  After we learned that, Fei immediately fetched enough money and gave it to them.  It was an additional episode of our Table Mountain climb.

The very last part of the climb, we have to use chains helping us to get to the top.  After we got to the top, the view was totally different from what we saw this morning.  The eastern side of the mountain has a beautiful coast line and township.  At the western side, we can see Lion’s Head, Robben Island and beautiful Cape Town.  We spent about an hour on the top to view the breathtaking views from all angles repeatedly.  Then we took the cable car down.  It was a worthy afternoon for achieving one of our goals of this trip.