Devil's Peak--Another Mis-adventure

Well, last weekend I had another misadventure, although not nearly as epic as the previous one. However, it does involve mountains again. Last Sunday, we thought it would be fun to climb Devil's Peak which sits just to the left of Table Mountain from our neighborhood. On the way up, one passes the Rhodes Memorial--a monument that should not be missed.

I started the day with the intent of knocking two items from my bucket list. Perhaps I should explain the bucket list. Time goes so fast when one is abroad and there is always something to be explored so I have done my best to list out those things for which I must do before leaving Cape Town. Both Rhodes and Devil's Peak were on that list...sadly Devil's Peak remains.

So we hiked up to the monument a third of the way up the mountain and rested and snacked before heading farther up the peak. We followed a path that we thought would take us to the summit and walked a ways before realizing that it did not in fact go up but around...we collectively decided that we would just turn the climb into a hike.

While I was slightly disappointed, it turned out to be a great day. We ended up walking for about 5 hours around the curving path and explored decaying buildings, observed beautiful wild flowers, and avoided a variety of wild creatures including unidentifiable bugs and snakes! It was a worthwhile adventure. As we started to head back to sea level, a cloud started to descend onto the mountain making our walk back a bit more challenging. It went from being a warm and sunny day to a windy and misty afternoon in all what seemed to be five minutes. It was really fun to walk through the clouds!

We stopped at the grocery store to buy supplies for family dinner on the way home. On the way, in a scene straight from a movie, a car, driving obscenely and unnecessarily close to the edge of road, sprayed a huge puddle of water at me. Yes, I was the lucky one in our group of four to take the brunt of this attack. I was drenched from head to toe, which is never comfortable, but especially not when one is already sticky from a day of climbing and covered in a red dust from the trails...

We all laughed, including me, at the situation and kept walking. But it truly felt like a scene from a movie where someone is downtrodden and this kind of incident would just be icing on the cake.

After a warm shower, I enjoyed the always anticipated family dinner and had a productive evening preparing for the upcoming week!