Middle Earth?!

On Saturday, January 26th, myself and about ten other kids from my program decided to hike Stellenbosch Mountain.  We can see the mountain from the area we live in as well as from places all over campus.  It looked easy enough - just one peak and then we would be at the summit.  Boy were we wrong!!  Behind the one peak that we can see, there are about four other peaks that we had to climb before we finally got to the can-marker at the top.  I went ahead to a 6th peak, (which I think was the true summit, but I'm not sure), with a boy from my group and did some moderate rock climbing to get to the top of that one.  I'm not sure of the exact elevation, but I googled the mountain and it seems to be about 3,500 feet.  Some other kids that live in our apartment complex hiked it the other day and they said that they thought the trip was a total of 25km - or about 15.5 miles.  We left our building at 6:10am and got to the base by 6:40.  We were at the top by 11:30ish.  We spent an hour or so at the top eating and enjoying the beautiful views before we started the trek down.  We got back down to the bottom around 4:30ish.  The hiking itself was pretty challenging and very different from what I'm used to back in the States.  For one thing, there was no shade and the sun, by the afternoon, was very, very hot.  Also, we had to do some minor to moderate bouldering/scrambling up and down some rock faces which was pretty exciting.  The final leg down was very steep and the path was covered in a loose grave-type substance, so the way down was much slower.  But, we finally made it down and I had the pleasure of swimming in a watering hole-type lake/pond/puddle at the base.  It was one of the best feelings ever!  I also had the pleasure of picking leeches off of one of the girl's feet after we were done swimming.

Some pictures of the hike!!

Gear!!!  I brought about three and a half liters of water and only had about a liter left by the end of the day! I also probably used up a quarter of my sunscreen!

  The hikers!  All of the people in this picture came to South Africa with the same program I am doing.  I met a few of them at the airport in Boston and I met most of the rest at the airport in Amsterdam.  Out of the 11 - only 3 didn't make it to the top.

The mountain!!  This was the view as we were approaching the mountain.  The sun is rising, and some of the hike up was (luckily) semi-shaded.

                 

The view from half way up.  We could see the ocean almost the whole way up and down which was very exciting.  We also saw the very tip of South Africa and someone thought they saw Antarctica - but I'm pretty sure they were dreaming!  It was kind of a cool experience to see the very end of a continent.

  It's kind of hard to see, but there are three dots on the flat rock towards the top of the photo.  That is me and one other boy at the "true summit" with the marker.

The whole way up, I kept thinking about how much the mountain looked like Middle Earth and Lord of the Rings.  I was talking to one of the kids and he said that Tolkien grew up in South Africa and it must have been where he got his inspiration from.  Whether this is where the inspiration came from or not, I still felt like a hobbit running away from orcs or some other terrifying creature!

 

More of the view!  Stellenbosch is the "Napa Valley" of Africa, so on all sides there were vineyards.  

We made it!!!  For the whole way, I kept thinking about how gross my feet were going to be because I was hiking in sandals.  I was very pleased with myself with the amount of dirt on my feet.  Although it looks like a tan, most of the brown came off.

  We were all waiting for this moment!!  Water had never felt so refreshing.