I’m on top of the woooorld!

Emotionally anyway. Physically I’m almost at the bottom of the world having just landed in Jo’burg in South Africa. It’s the 19th December and I’ve just flown all the way from Cairo with Egypt Air using a fake student ID I had acquired in order to get me a huge discount on the air fare.

Actually, it’s not a fake student ID, it’s a real one, it’s just that I lied that I was a student in order to get hold of one. I was originally told by a ‘reliable’ source that if I applied for one at the Cairo University they never actually check to see if you are a student or not. And once you get your ISIC card (International Student Identity Card) you’ll get huge discounts on international flights around the world, along with cheaper train fares, boats, museum and site entrance fees, etc. They can save you a fortune. So no-one was more disappointed than me the day I turn up there to get my card only to be asked by some jobsworth for some form of I.D.

Which of course I didn’t have. Because I’m not a student. Never have been.

Twat!

Thankfully though, someone told me I could still get around this by going down to the British Embassy in Cairo and having a document drawn up and sworn to say I am indeed a student in the Uk. It would cost about £50 to be notarised, but I’d still be quids in by the time I buy the airline ticket to South Africa alone. Oddly enough, at no point did I seem to think any of this behaviour could possibly land me in any sort of trouble nor indeed that I would be breaking any law. So, head in the clouds, off I go to the embassy and eventually get my legal document drawn up and sworn and then a few hours later I was walking out of Cairo University with my new student card, clearly stating that I am now a proud student of “Neville Boing University”, a fun name I just made up as I was filling out the paperwork. It’s cost me a few quid, but it’s going to save me hundreds over the coming months.

Reeeeesult.

Having now arrived in South Africa my mission is to get down to Cape Town in time for Christmas, which I’d heard was one big party. So with a hop, a skip and a jump I made my way down to the main train station in the capital, where I tried to get myself on the next train heading south.

For a brief moment it looked like Lady Luck was about to run out on me when I was told that all the trains going to Cape Town were now fully booked until after Christmas, but good fortune once again shone on my bony little ass when the ticket collector on the platform asked me to follow him to the front of the train with a sort of ‘don’t tell anyone’ look on his face. It was clear whatever cash I was about to give him would be going straight in his own pocket, but give a shit I did not and before I knew it I was sitting in my own first class carriage on the way to sunny Cape Town.

It was early afternoon, the skies were blue, I had my very own cabin in First Class and I was on my way to Cape Town, arriving shortly after sunrise the next morning. Life was just peaches and cream.

At sunrise I stick my head out of the window to see the most amazing red skies and in the distance I could see Table Mountain, surely one of the most iconic pieces of nature and indeed cities on the planet; a place I had dreamt of visiting for many years.

On the train to Cape Town

As I stepped off the train I was met by someone called Craig who was touting for people to take to his own backpacker place called Shanti Lodge in the Gardens area of Cape Town. In no time at all I had checked in, thrown my bag into my room, had a cold beer in my hand and was chatting to some of the other backpacker residents who would be my drinking buddies for the next week or so.

I can’t tell you how good life felt right at that moment.

Over the next few days we would all go down to the wonderful beaches of Cape Town, like Clifton No.3 and Camps Bay and then have a few beers back at Shanti Lodge or somewhere in the city. One evening we were talking about what we would all do for fun the next day when someone came up with the brilliant idea we should climb Table Mountain.

About four or five of us were really interested in doing it, but only one of us had actually ever done it before and that one person assured us that he knew a great route to the top and that it wouldn’t be any trouble at all. And that person who we were entrusting with our lives to get us to the top was an Irishman, who somewhat strangely enough, not only had a Scottish name, Angus, but also dressed like a Scotsman too. With huge, mad, ginger dreadlocks and walking around with a kilt, walking stick and various assault knives upon his person at all times, THIS was the man who was going to take us to the top of Table Mountain …..

Yeah …. a fucking lunatic. Funnily enough, seconds after this photo was taken in a Cape Town nightclub, he was seen crawling around on his hands and knees on the dance floor looking for his glasses which had fallen off during this pose!

Anyway, in hindsight, maybe I should have been a bit more sceptical of someone who both looks and acts like this, but at the time we were all really excited and looking forward to hiking up to the summit the next day.

That was until the next morning however, when all the smart people had worked out they would have to be mental to put their lives in the hands of someone like Angus and quite sensibly backed out. Me on the other hand, oblivious as ever, couldn’t see the problem, so after breakfast, armed with just the normal essentials for a sunny day hike, being a hat, some sun block and a big two litre bottle of Coke, the pair of us set off. Actually I don’t think I had any sun block. Or a hat.

Leaving the Shanti Lodge by foot it took a good half hour walk just to get to the entrance of the park itself at the base of the mountain. It was now late morning, stinky hot and like a burk I’d already necked most of the Coke before we’d even started the main climb up.

There’s a fantastic cable car at the park entrance that will take you straight to the best views over Cape Town from the summit in under five minutes, but we chose to climb one of the many different gorges that ascend the mountain from the lower levels. The climb itself was going to take a good two to three hours and with Angus leading the way on his ‘secret route’ we started the ascent.

Now one thing I learned very quickly at this point was that climbing up a mountain right below and behind a Scotsman in a kilt is not a pretty sight at all. Especially if they’re ‘commando’ as my little Irish friend was……

Starting on the hike

The route Angus was taking seemed to run directly under the cable car and as we slowly made our way further up the mountain the more severe the incline became. And to make things more fun in the midday sun, I’ve run out of Coke already.

But at least the scenery was amazing …..

As you can see from this photo, the climb even here was pretty steep already and it was about to get a whole lot tougher. Indeed, shortly after this photo was taken, there were some rock climbers on the right hand side who sounded like they were shouting ‘don’t go that way’. And looking at the scenery up ahead of us that would certainly seem like good, solid advice, but Angus reassured me that he knew the way well and not to worry. And why should I doubt him ….. a mad Irishman with an identity problem I met in a bar a few nights ago ….. over some professional rock climbers?

A few minutes later, instead of hiking up little pathways and stone steps, we were now climbing a rockface, which in no time at all became more and more sheer.

I remember when I was young boy that I used to love climbing trees. All boys do. But what definitely sticks out in my memory is the day I climbed the highest I’d ever climbed before and when I finally got to the top and looked down my first thought was ‘how the hell am I going to get down again’. It traumatised me for many years slowly climbing down the tree again that day, but I had at least learned a valuable lesson and that is it’s much easier to climb up something than down.

Here I was, many years later, somewhat all of a sudden half way up an almost sheer rockface, standing on a tiny ledge, and like that little boy, looking up and thinking ‘there’s NO way we can climb up any further here’ then looking down and thinking ‘how the hell are we going to get down!?’

At that exact moment I was actually a bit concerned for my safety and looking at Angus for some sort of words of wisdom and comfort all I got was ‘shit, we’re fucked’.

If that wasn’t bad enough, it was that exact moment that I got a short sharp pain in my guts. At first I shook it off as nothing, but a few moments later it hit me again, this time much worse. I couldn’t believe it. I’m stuck half way up Table Mountain on a tiny ledge, with just a nutcase for company, and my body decides now is good time to give me the shits. I can barely stand on this little ledge it’s so small and with nowhere to hide my embarrassment I was forced to quickly drop my shorts and shit my guts out right there and then in front of poor Angus. It was also at that point, crouching down in agony with my shorts round my ankles, I heard the cable car whizzing by overhead and wondered if a bunch of tourists had seen us on the cliff’s edge below as they went up. Me with my pants down and diarrhoea streaming down the cliff and some ginger guy in a kilt pissing himself laughing, in between gagging. Maybe I would have seen the funny side of it too had I not suddenly wondered what the hell am I going to wipe my arse with? Between the two of us the ONLY thing in our possession that resembled toilet paper of any kind was a tiny silk lens cloth I had for my video camera. Needless to say that fell woefully short of what was required and as I pulled up my shorts the only positive I could muster was that thankfully Angus didn’t have a camera to capture my blushes. Even then, I was quickly back to the reality of the ‘what the hell were we going to do now’ scenario. We certainly couldn’t go up, so, facing the inevitable we both took a deep breath, turned around and ever so slowly started scaling our way down the cliff we had so miraculously made our way up a short while back. Obviously I let Angus go first as the last things my guts needed at this delicate moment was sight of his meat and two veg as we scaled our way down the cliff.

Back down at ground level, relieved I hadn’t fallen to a premature death, I made two quick, easy decisions. Firstly, that in no way would I ever trust anything this Irish lunatic ever says to me again and secondly, that if we are still going to climb this mountain then we do it using a clearly marked trail.

Making our way back down to the main hiking trail we walked about twenty minutes further away from the cable car and found a route called the Platteklip Gorge, which in hindsight we should have probably taken in the first place ….. rather than Angus’s hairbrained suicide route ….

Even this route was no walk in the park, it was pretty steep and was a good two hours solid hiking up big stone steps and tracks. Thankfully we found a fresh water stream on the way up so we could at least rehydrate, not having had anything to drink in the midday sun for nearly two hours.

We then funnily enough met a couple of people from Shanti Lodge along the way who after enjoying the story of me shitting myself earlier joined us on our way up the gorge, soaking in the awesome views whenever we could and watching the cute, little cat-sized rodents called Dassies that inhabit the mountain.

Dassies

When we eventually got to the top I was so tired, so thirsty, so hungry, that ignoring the spectacular views in all directions, I ran straight to the restaurant and stuffed my face with pasta and soft drinks until my body was happy again.

I then came outside to this ……..

The views down over Camps Bay and out towards the Twelve Apostles were just stunning. Then, to make the day even better, we hung around until early evening and with a bottle of Hunters Cider in hand saw one of the most beautiful sunsets ever, over maybe the most beautiful city on the planet.

Time lapse sunset at the summit

From the jaws of failure, getting stuck half way up a cliff face and getting the squits, the day had been a resounding success. No thanks to fucking Angus that’s for sure.

And with that we took the cable car down!