Oliver Faure's First Class Hike

Table Mountain, Table Mountain (Nature Reserve), Cape Town, South Africa

The hike was in Silver mine and went through the mountain above Kalk bay on day one. The second day of the hike we started hiking through the mountains above glen cairn past the Lewis Gay and Kleinplaas dams and ending in the Simonstown mountains.

DAY 1
It was a very hot day and the skies were clear. There wasn’t a lot of shade on the hike, but luckily, we all had sunscreen and hats, I even had an umbrella for shade.
There were lots of people out on the trails in the morning. As the morning progressed, we started to see more hikers.
We started to hike at 08:15 to get out after the afternoon sun rather than 10:30 that I had originally planned.
We got to Castle Rock at 12:20. We took off our shoes and went down to the beach to go for a swim. The water wasn’t too cold. We at lunch at 13:45, which was chicken burgers we I had made earlier. We played a board game and went down for another swim. We just sat around for the rest of the afternoon.
At 19:00 we started the fire and began preparing supper. Charles then saw two otters swimming., so we rushed back down to the beach after grabbing some snorkels and masks and swam right up to them. They jumped off the rock they had climbed on and swam awayand we couldn’t find them. We got out and carried on preparing supper.
Supper was chicken kebabs, garlic bread and salad.

DAY 2
It was very misty at the start of the hike, but it cleared up as the sun started to come out. Even though it was quite misty for the first part of the hike it was quite picturesque (the photos don’t do the scenery justice)
There were less people out hiking or trail running so it was more peaceful.
On the car ride back to Castle Rock we all decided to go for a swim to cool off again. We also hoped to see the otters that we had seen the night before.

FINAL THOUGHTS
The hike went well overall. We had a hiccup on day one where we walked past the one turnoff but we found our way back onto the right path a bit later on. Some good come out of it though, because we found a lost cell phone and manage to find its owner.
Starting the hike on day one earlier to avoid hiking in the midday heat was a very good choice. If we started later on day two, we wouldn’t have had to start hiking in really thick mist, but we would have bee hiking in the midday heat.
I would like to do the day two section of the hike when it is warmer and not raining, to swim in the Kleinplaas dam
We had a really cool encounter with the otters in the evening on day one. Seeing the otters in person really made the hike extra special for everyone.
The contrast between a really hot day one of the hike that had very busy trails compared to a more peaceful and cooler day two was really nice to have. I found it quite enjoyable.