Day 4 – AfricaCom and Table Mountain

SOUTH AFRICA

Day 4 – AfricaCom and Table Mountain

At last! Today turned out to be bright and beautiful. The sun was shining vividly in the sky by 7 AM and it was already in the mid 60′s. However, today was also the first day of the mobile conference AfricaCom, which I had registered for some weeks ago. So, I decided I would spend the morning and early afternoon at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) attending AfricaCom, and then head out to Table Mountain in the afternoon. I wanted to be there for a sunset visit anyway to be able to catch the colors of the evening sky and practice some digital photography skills.

I’ll cover AfricaCom in another post under the Mobile Madness page, but I will say that it was a very well run and attended event. The key theme for this first day was on the release of 4G and LTE technology across the African continent and ways on how to monetize the business opportunities. I attended several seminars and visited quite a few booths and spoke to their representatives. All in all, I was impressed.

Around 2 PM, I decided it was time to head out towards Table Mountain and decided that I would just go ahead and walk the entire distance even though I was told it would take about 2 hours to do so. While that turned out to be a little bit of a stretch, it did take me about 90 minutes from the waterfront area where the Convention Center is to get to the gondola that takes visitors to the summit of Table Mountain. Once I did get here, my original idea was to take one of the trails to the summit instead of the gondola. So, I walked an additional 2 kilometers to a trailhead. However, once I got there, the security guy told me it was too late to be starting on the trail and since I was by myself, it was also unsafe. So, I walked back to the gondola and purchased a round trip ticket for R180.

From the city, the first thing that really struck me when I first arrived in Cape Town on Sunday was how prominent the Table Mountain landmark really is. This mountain dwarfs the entire city of Cape Town and can be seen from just about anywhere except for some areas in the city centre when other high rise buildings are directly in front of you. I have never been to another major city anywhere in the world where a natural landmark was such a dominant figure. Truly, this is what makes Cape Town one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

The gondola ride to the top was swift and impressive. It rises from around 300 meters to the 1067 meter point in about 4 minutes. The rock formations near the summit are quite impressive as one nears the top. Once there, a visitor has quite a bit of territory they can walk around and explore and is about 2 miles (3 km) from one side of the plateau to the other. While there is no singular point where a good 360° view of the surroundings can be seen from, the cumulative views are very impressive. Robben Island is easily viewed as well as the entire city of Cape Town spreading out to the north. Over to the east side is the Atlantic Ocean and the south side of the plateau looks to the direction of False Bay. We were fortunate to have driven part of the way around False Bay when we went down to Cape Point. It helped to put the geography of this area into perspective.

All in all, I spent around five hours walking all over the plateau stopping quite frequently to take pictures and hike on some of the trails. Table Mountain does not stand alone. It is flanked on both the east and west side by two other, yet smaller, peaks. To the east is Devil’s Peak, and Lion’s Head is situated to the west.

Sunset hit around 7:30 PM and I had my tripod out with my Nikon D90 DSLR and took quite a few pictures of the sunset going down over the Atlantic Ocean. I finally got back down using the last gondola ride at 8 PM and took a taxi to get back to the hotel since it would have taken over an hour to walk there and I have been told many, many times to not walk after sunset in any of the major cities in South Africa.

I’m pretty happy that I waited for the right day to head up to the top of Table Mountain instead of doing it on Monday or Tuesday when the weather was cloudy and less cooperative. The experience would probably have been somewhat of a let down, especially if everything was covered up in clouds and mist. The sunset was absolutely striking. The reds, oranges, and purple hues of the evening sky accompanied by the warm weather and the sweet sounds of a strings orchestra playing for a private event near the restaurant made for a spectacular outing.