Saturday 14 February 2015

Day 24 - Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day! A day of romance. A day of love. For Martin and I, it was a day of climbing a mountain. Lions Head Mountain to be exact.

After Martin EVENTUALLY woke up, about an hour after me, we quickly headed down for lunch, where we were treated to a not too bad bangers and mash. The funny thing about Berghof Retirement Village, is that you never know how the food will turn out. You can get something that sounds really nice, and it be inedible. You can get something that sounds awful but is actually quite nice. Or you can just get average food, that you eat because it's free, and you don't want to spend all your money on food. Today, it was a decent meal, so I was happy.

We were either going to go to Hout Bay Beach, or Lions Head, depending on the weather. After seeing that it was a little bit cooler than what we've had since we've been out here, we decided to put off Hout Bay, and go up Lions Head.
We decided to walk our way there instead of getting a bus to the bottom of the mountain, which meant that before we'd even started the trek up it, we'd have to walk up this ridiculously steep road to get there. Easy.
So off we set, took about 30 minutes to get to the bottom of Lions Head, and we started venturing up the little path that was guiding us. Before we left, George said it was fairly dangerous to go up it just the 2 foreigners, and Yonick and Jodi's mum apparently said that it was really dangerous too. They weren't all that wrong. After walking for about half an hour/45 minutes, the clear path turned into just a path of rock, that you had to climb, and lift yourself up over. Some points I was genuinely scared. It was brilliant.
As we got higher and higher, we get more tired, and the path got more dangerous, and the weather got more windy, and it felt more unsafe. But we kept going. We were so close to the top, when Martin hit his ankle on a rock and had to stop! We were literally 10 minutes from the top! We were so close! After waiting for a bit, he told me to carry on without him, and he'd sit on a rock, rest his ankle, and wait for me. I didn't come all this way to not reach the top so I agreed, and carried on. Sure enough, 10 minutes later I was at the top! All by myself! The view was absolutely incredible. You could see across the whole of Cape Town, it was beautiful. I'll upload some photos as soon as I can, but wifi's been poor recently, and I'm tired after all that walking, so I won't do it tonight. But wow. It was amazing. It was a quality feeling knowing I'd walked up the whole thing aswell, I was just gutted that Martin hit his ankle and couldn't join me. It wasn't the same without him.

After taking plenty of photos, and just admiring the sights, I decided it was time to go down to Martin, and head home. Phwoar, getting down felt a lot harder than coming up! You had to sit yourself down, both hands on the rock, and lower yourself down onto the next rock, so as not to over jump it and go tumbling down the side. We took our time coming down, just to be safe, and after about another hour we were safely on concrete roads, it felt weird after walking on rocks for the last few hours.
Legs tired and achy, we carried on walking home, and every now and again we'd turn around and just be amazed that we walked up as far as we did. I was chuffed. Exhausted, but chuffed.

Tomorrow we have another day off, this time the choice is between Hout Bay, if the weathers really nice, or the Aquarium at the Waterfront, which George says is amazing. Then onto watch the Arsenal - Middlesborough game somewhere after. Hopefully we can bag a win, and a place in the quarter finals!

Harry

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