Lions Head at Sundown

After playasketball on Tuesday evening without any shoes on (which made me pretty sore about everywhere), a small group of us decided to hike up Lions Head to see the sunset there.

Starting the way up

I started with Karin, Luzia (my fellow interns), Andrea and two housemates of hers. I have never been up to Lions Head before, so I didn't know, how the hike would be. Half way up, the rest of my group decided, that they don't want to climb down the way with the chains and handles in darkness. They wanted to go a little further back and watch the sunset there.





We had a wonderful view down all the way up! The weather was perfect, the sky was clear except for the table cloth over Table Mountain, which we had a pretty amazing view of:

Table Mountain with a little table cloth on top

A little further we also saw the Twelve Apostles all the way down to the Cape. Behind the little horizon you see there is nothing for miles and miles and miles - and than the South Pole!

the Twelve Apostles

A little further around the Hill you could see the scenery to the other side: Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for so many years), Sea Point, Signal Hill and further north the Northern Suburbs.

Signal Hill

Top of Lions Head

We were already half way up and it was still half an hour to sundown, so I did want to climb all the way up! Lucky for me I knew that a group of interns at German School went up there half an hour before us (Christian, my German house mate was with them). So I kind of switched groups, climb up the rest of the hill - there are two ways up - I took the easy one around the hill, not straight up.

Table Mountain sighted by the sunset

The view from the top was seriously worth 20 minutes more climbing! It is spectacular, to see table mountain beside you, all the way down to Cape Point, Robben Island and further up to north for so far! Cape Town really is a huge City!

 

Sunset into the South Atlantic Ocean from Lions Head

To the west the only thing you see is water, I guess the next thing out there would be South America. The sky was clear for all the way up, shortly before sundown the thin line of clouds appeared on the horizon. It made sundown even more wonderful!


The group I started with was afraid it would be too dark to get down from the top. It actually wasn't that dark at all. It stayed light for quite a while and later the lights of the city gave enough light to walk easily.

So it would have been easy to come down Lions Head after dark, if one of the group hadn't fell! One of Christian's colleagues missed a step right under the top - it wasn't dark at all at that point, he just wasn't careful enough where to step. So he missed a step and fell like 1 1/2 meter. Luckily he was caught by a bush! But he did hurt his ankle. A few minutes later a physiotherapist passed us and stopped to help. She use my tank top as a bandage and I had some pain killers with me, so we could help him at least a little.We still had to get him down on one leg. The two boys did a lot of carrying, I just took the bags. The first part which we thought would be hard actually was pretty easy, because you could go a long way on your but. The hurt one could do that well also, so it took us way longer than expected, but we managed. After that three guys, that passed us on their way up, as we started down on one foot less caught up with us on our way down and helped with carrying him.Close to the parking lot even a few security guards came and helped. Nevertheless, the few kept being spectacular, even the hurt one in pain could appreciate that.

Table Mountain with cloth

and the twelve Apostles

By the time we reached the parking lot, where a friend of the interns of German School picked us up and drove us home, it was fully dark and we had one more spectacular view over Cape Town.

Cape Town at night from Lions Head

Subsequent entry: as I kind of feared my top got disposed in the hospital. The doctors couldn't find anything broken or damaged. He got crutches and a bandage.