|
The swirling, gusting wind - known here as the South Easter – has arrived: summer is on its way. Summer in Cape Town means 'season time' – hot dry months of busy beaches, packed restaurants and people everywhere.
It also means a steady procession of foreigners lightly shoving their way into the cable car en route to the top of Cape Town's greatest landmark: Table Mountain.
Once at the top a montage of noise and colour assails your senses: shrieking kids feeding the now rotund rabbit-like dassies; slouching teenagers too cool to enjoy the view and wheezing expanses of lycra and polyester ... it's not quite what you expected.
So for those who want to do the mountain but don't want the Club Med feel, I’ll let you in on a secret.
Sitting on a wind-sculptured boulder I took stock of my surroundings: craggy mountains and jaw-dropping views over the ocean; sunlight bouncing off an inky lake; whirring insects and creaking frogs; the piney, herby smell of the Cape's floral masterpiece – the fynbos (Cape's unique, shrubby vegetation). And no-one else.
Visitors – and many locals – are often unaware of the scale of Table Mountain. We all recognise its familiar postcard silhouette and it doesn't take a genius to work out where the money lives.
The south-eastern slopes see annual rainfall of up to four times that of London and are consequently draped in large mansions and enormous green gardens.
The western city side of the mountain has a drier, windier climate and has become a magnet for the rich and not quite famous.
However, it's to the south that the scale of the mountain becomes apparent: stretching down the Peninsula like a buckled spine is the Table Mountain range, finishing abruptly at the blustery Cape Point.
I'd taken the back door up the mountain, starting at Constantia Nek deep in the Volvo-infested Southern Suburbs and some 20kms from the cable car station.
Park your car in the shade – there's a car guard to keep an eye on it, give him some spare change when you get back – and start the walk.
Winding through a pine forest (in the process of being felled to encourage indigenous vegetation) the crumbly track is steep and unrelenting – prepare to hear cries of "Are we there yet?" from your companions (and your legs).
But as you work your way up the views get better, the air cleaner and the white noise of traffic is replaced by gentle sounds of a mountain: the wind sifting through reeds and the steady drip of water percolating through the peaty soil.
Then, without warning the incline vanishes and Table Mountain shyly reveals its secret side.
It's called the Back Table - a world of lakes and pockets of forest, soggy fields of marsh criss-crossed by tiny streams leaking out of springs.
The sound of frogs discretely burping is joined by the occasional caw of a raven; porcupine quills lie casually discarded on the track – and if it's sunny, keep an eye out for basking snakes.
Above all it's bastion of the fynbos, that unique collection of plants that covers most of the Western Cape. And the diversity – there are more species of plant on the mountain than in the entire British Isles - is staggering.
Cunning carnivorous sundews lie in sticky wait for hapless ants, fat aloes scramble up rock faces and the extravagant blooms of flowers are everywhere.
Orange pin cushion proteas, yellow leucodendrons and pink watsonias were showing off when I was last there, it would be an entirely different palate today.
Take a picnic – there is a suitable place to stop and gape at the view every 100m or so – and don't forget all the accoutrements necessitated by a mountain walk: hat, water, sunblock, a warm jersey and energy snacks.
You'll have to try hard to get lost: it's a wide road all the way, albeit with numerous tempting diversions.
Make your way to the main Hely-Hutchinson Dam where the presence of a tidy little museum chock-a-block with Victorian industrial machinery will take you by surprise.
The track loops around the glimmering brown water and you can return on the same path – and the good news is that it's all downhill.
|
