Last Day in Cape Town.

On our last day in Cape Town, Nancy and I still had one thing that we wanted to do--go to the top of Table Mountain.  So, we caught a cab at the ship with our friends, Dan and Mary Abel, and headed to the cable car station.  When we got there, we found that the cable car was closed due to high winds.  That was just as well since I certainly wasn't going to go up on it with the winds that were blowing.

Nancy investigated trail options, so we decided to take the "safe route" up as far as we wanted to go.  We got to the first level, and Dan and Mary decided that they couldn't spend the time to go much further, so we went ahead without them to discover for ourselves just how high we were capable of going.

 The views were magnificent, but by the time we had reached this point, the trail started to get steeper with high rock steps.

The winds were ferocious--blowing down in our face-- but we were encouraged by a group of SAS students (those crazy kids) who were coming down after having gone up by moonlight to watch the sunrise on this Easter morning.

At this point it seemed doable to hike all the way to the top.  After all, we had made this investment in this climb.  We did have to stop along the way a number of times to let our pounding hearts slow down.  Our main concern was the wind that felt like it could topple you right off the mountain.  On one of our rests near the top, a guy coming down stopped and said "it's great that a guy your age could make it this far"  Under my breath I told him what he could kiss, but to him I said "In about 30 minutes, a guy my age is going to be standing on the top.  And I was.

 The top was very windy and cold, so we were finally glad we had brought jackets.  We wandered around the top for an hour and enjoyed the magnificent views from all sides.  We could see Robben Island, the city below us and even the ship.  Lion's Head, the next peak over had seemed as high as Table Mountain when we started, but from the top, it looked like a pimple on the landscape.  We were pretty tired, so we explored alternative ways down, but they were much longer even if they were easier.

So, down we headed and we made good time until we started to tire.  My legs actually started to quiver about half way down, so we made frequent stops and relied more on using our arms to brace ourselves.  I'm pretty sure I couldn't have gone much further when we finally got down, and thankfully, a cab was disgorging a couple of passengers, so we caught it back to the port. 

Total time was almost 7 hours, and we had missed lunch, so we stopped at a restaurant, ate lunch and watched the musicians.  I killed almost an entire pizza by myself while I played a game of "who is the best target for a pick pocket".  There were several, so I can see how so many people lost their stuff.
We returned to the ship and joined a long line of people who were claiming returns on their VAT (valued added taxes) with S. Africa.  We'll probably get $20 in about 6 months.  Then we heard that the ship was not going to sail that night because the port had been closed because of high winds. 

We had dinner on the back deck while the sun set, and then returned to our cabin where I fell asleep at 7:30 fully dressed from the exhaustion of the day.