Cape Town Hikes

First I hiked up Table Mountain via the India Venster route. You've got to go this route! It's so fun. Once you're through the 20 minutes or so of stairmaster climbing in the beginning, y walk, scramble through some rocks, walk, scramble again, lifting yourself up by your arms in some places. In one spot there was the *perfect* handle, as if the wind and rain eroded it just to shape it into a handle. Look out for it!

There are also a few animals on the route! Pictures below.

Table Mountain from below:

Up and into the rocks:

Made it through:

Cool rock erosion:

Hiking buddy:

Spotted this chubby dassie (Hyrax) and a few other creatures on the route:

The next morning I hiked up that hill you kept seeing off in the distance of so many of my pictures: Lion's Head. Its name comes from the view of the entire mountain range from afar. Use your imagination and it looks a bit like a crouching sphinx-like lion. Lion's Head is at one end and at the other end is Signal Hill, also known as the lion's rump.

I heard it gets a bit crowded (and boy - did it ever!) so I wanted a sunrise hike. This time of year the sun rises around 5:30 so I woke up at 3:30 to get there in time. The time hurt a bit, but the hike is pretty painless (30-40 mins). The sunrise was awesome, as you see below.

I didn't get a picture of them (this blog has one) but Lion's Head is also home to the endangered Silver Trees. In person, in the sun, they have a shimmery sheen on one side of their leaves. They are endangered so this is not possible, but if there were as many Silver Trees as evergreens, they would make beautiful Christmas Trees, with leaves green on one side and silver on the other.

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