Yesterday me, Bonnie (Australia), and Corrinne & Kevin (Canada) went to Table Mountain. It was finally sunny out and couldn't have been a more perfect day. I had left a note on the house bulletin board saying, "I'm going to Table Mountain on Sunday if anyone wants to go. I'm planning to take the cable car up and abseil down." Obviously Bonnie, Kevin & Corrinne took the bait. We got there, bought our tickets for the cable car and headed up. Let me say, this mountain can be deceiving because the top is flat (like a table, hence the name Table Mountain) and so it doesn't seem that high. As we're watching the cable cars you can barely see the point at the top of the mountain where the cars stop because it's so high up! The cable car itself is pretty big, probably holding about 30 people. You stand in it and the floor rotates so you're seeing every angle possible as you spin around and travel hundreds of meters up in the sky. There are windows all around and about every 4th window, there are just bars, no glass, so you're just looking straight out, could stick your hands out. The higher we get the more scared I am because I'm realizing how high we are. I can't really express in words what this looked like or how at that moment I was thinking, "Ok, so maybe I won't be abseiling today!" By the way, abseiling is just repelling, I don't know why it's called abseiling here though... So anyway, we get to the top and walk around, do some picture taking, and watch a group of girls get ready to abseil so I can decide if I'm going to do this or not. After some watching, and gripping the ledge even as I stand still, I confirm that I cannot do it!! Everyone else did though, which is funny because nobody else had planned on it, just me & my note and I'm the one who backed out! Yes, we found the thing I couldn't do. I think it's because I didn't expect to be scared at all. Especially not in the cable car and when I was that freaked out I was thinking..."what if I'm that scared the entire abseil? I don't want to be that scared for that long of time, and have to be controlling something too!!" So I didn't do it. And I've made peace with it!! So I took pics for everyone else. Although all I could see was them take their first steps backwards off a cliff 1000 meters high...after that they were gone from anyone and everyone's sight. Table Mountain is the highest abseil in the world! I think I could have done it and I'm sure been scared to death, and very pumped afterwards, but again, I'm totally ok with it. Kinda scary thinking about it! So anyway, as I was saying, the views were amazing up there. You could see for miles and miles into the ocean, a good view of Robben Island, just awesome stuff in every direction.
Here's a few pics. The one with the cables in view is my view as we were coming down from the mountain...see how the cables keep going and there's a teeny tiny building at the very end that you can hardly even see...that's where the cable cars stop...gives you can idea of how high up we were!!!
Here's a few pics. The one with the cables in view is my view as we were coming down from the mountain...see how the cables keep going and there's a teeny tiny building at the very end that you can hardly even see...that's where the cable cars stop...gives you can idea of how high up we were!!!
