Cape Town. Part 2. Abseiling from the top of Table Mountain.

The climb up to it's peak was exhausting and took just over 3 hours. This is the hardest thing I have climbed, Kieran of course was like a little goat, leaping effortlessly from rock to rock and took great pride in the fact that he made it to the top first whilst Dan and I struggled behind him with all the luggage. Take something warm we were told. It will be chilly. Lesson number one. when an African says it will be chilly, his definition of the word 'chilly' is slightly different to mine. 26C is not chilly, and lugging a bag with 3 heavy fleeces up a rock 1080m high is definitely not chilly!

Once at the top though it was worth it and the views were breathtaking. From the surrounding mountains, the bays below and of Cape Town, wherever we looked it was just simply stunning.

We pretty much abseiled straight away. Our abseiling guides were Natalie, Mickey and Nico and we put our lives in their hands for the next 45 minutes or so.

Kieran and I went down first. I think my vertigo is pretty much cured now, though I got that real sick feeling when Kieran (with harness) just casually walked to the edge of the drop and on tiptoes leaned forward to peer over at the 1000+m drop below. This is 3 times the height of the Eiffel Tower and K is peering over as if deciding to step off the side of the pool, whilst I am quietly soiling myself and hair turning greyer by the minute!

We soon were both harnassed up and were on the very edge, leaning backwards and ready to step off. There is a surprise waiting for you we were told. I didn't know what the surprise was, aside making it down safely and gently collapsing into the arms of the very gorgeous Natalie, but all thoughts of surprises and of her were soon gone as I started lowering myself down. K shot down quite quickly and I had no chance of catching him up I thought, that was until our ropes got tangled. Yup tangled at a 1000metres. What actually happened was his ropes knocked into me and manged to clip themselves to my belt. I soon unclipped him, but there was a horrible feeling at one point that I was unclipping the wrong things and no amount of double checking made me feel any easier, but unclipped from me he became and we both went down without further incident.

The surprise was about half way down. After about 60 metres the wall suddenly ended. Shame as I was doing some nice big jumps. Suddenly there is no wall, just a sheer drop where we are suspended in midair, approx 950 feet off the ground. Guess what expletive shot out of my mouth!. Still it was a nice view as we lowered ourselves down to the ledge where we ended. And where the lovely Natalie was waiting for us to unhook us and give us congratulatory hugs.

It was simply awesome and probably one of the biggest adrenaline rushes I have had. I think even bigger than the parachute jump as when you are just suspended at that height, you have the time to take it all in.

Next came Dan, who as always takes it all in his stride and as we waited for him at the bottom we suddenly heard a loud groan when he reached the end of the wall, followed by a 'Now what do I do?' before he too enjoyed the feeling of being suspended for the remaining 60metres. He made it safely down quickly followed by Barry, a guy we met on the trip. There were 12 of us in total abseiling, mostly English and a couple of Americans and we became quite friendly with a few of them.

That being done, we now had to climb back up the 120metres that we abseiled, I guess technically we have climbed Table Mountain 1.1 times now.

Of course after reaching the top again we now had that climb back down which we were not looking forward to. Unfortunately the cable cars were closed for maintenance, which in a way was a good thing as it was fairly quiet at the top, as having to climb up and down puts a lot of people doing it. I do like having these 'wonders' to myself, and not inundated with tourists.

The climb down was a real hard slog. The 3 of us set off first and we got down probably about a third of it when I seriously thought I was going to have a cardiac arrest. We found a little rock in the sun and decided to just have a good long rest which was the best idea I have had in a long time. I think we sat there for about 45 minutes, just chilling out and chatting when some of the others caught us up. We then all set off together and I have to say, the final trek down was really easy.

So that was yesterdays adventure. And we can now add to the list of places seen and things done abseiling from the top of Table Mountain. Today we went sandboarding and quad biking and I shall write about that later.