Table Mountain
1 JUNE 2023
Table Mountain is visible on a good day, from the windows of where I am staying in the city. It's been covered in cloud for the last few days - today I am hoping that will clear and we can climb to the top.
Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens:
This is a most beautiful place at the foot of Table Mountain - 52,800 square kms of unique flora most of which is endemic to S Africa. The fynbos is the vegetation of the mountains and coastal plains of this SW Cape area. 'fine bush' - in Dutch.
I was able to join the 10:00 free tour with the expert guide - Lindsay. The next 1.5 hours was a joyful discovery of the unique relationship between plants, animals and insects within the ecosystem, much of which I was not aware of at all. We were shown the following plants:
Proteas - we saw several members of this species, some looking like pincushions and conebushes., including the Waboom and the eye catching silver tree
Ericas and other heath-like plants with small leaves - we saw the erica hirtiflora and the deep red tubes of the erica abietina
Reeds- like restios
Geophytes - plants that have an underground storage organ like a bulb, corm, tuber or rhizome. We saw the disa and watsonia
Lindsay explained that thousands of trees were felled for timber in the late 1600s and 1700s, then alien timber trees were planted, reducing the forest patches in the cape area even further. The Kirstenbosch forests have been protected since the garden was established in 1913. In the 1960s alien trees were eradicated and the forests left to regenerate and recover naturally.
Table Mountain:
I'd arranged to climb Table Mountain with Ross, I guy I kept bumping into on my journey from Namibia to S Africa. He is a botanical enthusiast - passionate about plants and a keen hiker. We had agreed to climb up via the Skeleton Gorge and return via the Patterklip Gorge Trail. We set off up the Skeleton Gorge and reached one of the waterfalls. We disturbed a photographer taking esoteric photographs of a woman with floating clothes by the waterfall - not sure what was going on there. We chatted to them later and learnt that our proposed route up the mountain would be dangerous and tough due to the weather and cloud over. We decided to change our plans.
We returned to the base and took a taxi round to the cable car side of Table Mountain. Here the sun was out and the climb up the Patterklip Gorge route was really pleasant with brilliant views and hosts of flora to see. Once on the top, we were above the cloud line and saw the peak of Signal Hill. We found a flowering fire lily amongst the burn foliage on the summit and other interesting vegetation types in this unique ecosystem. Across the summit there were many places to view the city below and the bays along the coast. A fantastic place.
We took the cable car down for 220ZAR. There were hundreds of people - where did they all come from? We were herded into huge circular cars for the decent and stood on a rotating floor as we watched the views down the mountain side.
An adventurous and fabulous day.