Shanghai wedgie

Here's where it really starts to get good. Yesterday we did what every tourist to Cape Town must: visit Table Mountain. But of course we couldn't just do things the easy way and take the cable car up, we all decided to hike up. Just looking at this rock it doesn't seem possible to do anything but climb up it because it quite literally looks like a table. But with assurances that there was a trail that would take at max 2 hours my room of 4 girls decided to hike it.

But as if that wasn't cool enough, we did one better. The 4 of us also arranged to abseil (repel) down once we got to the top. As such we stuck together and climbed the gorge trail that started at the base of the mountain and went steeply up, while the other girls not abseiling started at the botanical gardens and hiked sideways over to the mountain (~5 hours). I don't know how they did such a long hike, 2 hours almost killed us.

Though I'm so proud of us for doing it, this was the hike from hell. At the end it was about 1.3 miles, which seems like so little to us; however it was 1.3 miles almost straight up. And not just on any trail, but on a giant stairway made from uneven rocks and boulders. It was like being on a broken stair machine for 2 hours. Less than a quarter of the way into the trail we came across a fork where we could continue or take a path to the cable cars, which we briefly considered. But we couldn't wimp out then!


We tried to take it slow and let people pass us. Eventually we ended up hiking with the same group of people, who would pass us then stop and we would pass them. The second half of the trail was super steep so we would all go up a vertical section, then everyone would gather and make a pit stop on a landing before the next push up. Tess and I ended up splitting up from Claudia and Jackiy, mostly because we just wanted to get it over with and hauled some major ass up that mountain. We made it in about 2 hr 10 min.

The top was deceiving in that it wasn't all that flat on top. Kind of disappointing. But the views were INCREDIBLE, you could see all of the cape. Once we bought some more water and ate our sandwiches we made our way straight over to one edge to find the abseiling. I thought about chickening out once I saw the ropes going over the edge, but at that point I was so spent I didn't really care. That is until we went up to the edge...

Our guide guy was really good looking and super sarcastic, so he helped us relax a little bit. Claudia was joking with him about having a crazy wedgie from the harness, which he then aptly named a Shanghai wedgie and was the quote of the day. Tess and Jackiy were going to go first, followed by me and Claudia. But when it came time to go over the edge Jackiy got freaked out and couldn't do it--that meant I was up. I have never been more terrified in my life, we were repelling down 112 meters to another landing and then hiking back up, but repelling about 3000 feet above the rest of Cape Town. Needless to say I absolutely DID NOT look down. Right over the ledge I freaked out and begged them to pull me back up, but they couldn't... I was not very good at the repelling, I had a hard time keeping my legs under me and I definitely kissed some rock once or twice.

I don't remember saying anything besides "help!!" "omg am I done yet? where's the bottom?? Tess am I close?" and probably some other choice words. I guess the guide at the top started laughing after I went over because my reaction was really funny, but I don't remember saying anything too entertaining. Just flipping out. I was a total baby about it, which I am fully aware of, but at least I did it.

The 'secret' part of this abseiling was when the rock face ended, the guides at the top lowered us down. So for a good few hundred feet we were hanging there while the guy at the top controlled the rope. Some of us didn't realize this for a while and thought we were still controlling our descent, and I really did think I was going to die. Tess turned around and watched the amazing view while being lowered, I just stuck to staring at the wall trying not to panic. I'm glad we did it, I'm so proud of us, but I will not be walking down a cliff ever again. At the bottom while we waited for Claudia and Jackiy we got to chat with the worker helping us off the rope. His name was Xolani, and like I said you click the x. He taught me how to click correctly and a few more Xhosa words that we have since forgotten.

At the end we were all exhausted and smelled incredibly rank, but it was a day of adrenaline and pushing ourselves further than we thought we could all in the name of tourism. Pretty cool, right?

*All photo credits to Tess and her awesome camera :)