Mountains are created to be conquered; adversities are designed to be defeated; problems are sent to be solved. It is better to master one mountain than a thousand foothills. –William Arthur Ward

More Devil's Peak Photos 

I now have one final and two projects to complete before I am officially finished with my junior year of college.  Where did the time go?  This semester has literally flown by, I’ve done a lot more flying this semester than I have ever done in my life: I flew 8 hours to Frankfurt and 11.5 hours to Cape Town, and then I flew through the air as I jumped off cliffs into waterfalls, jumped off the world’s highest bungee bridge, jumped off more cliffs into the Indian Ocean, and soared through the air when I ran off Lion’s Head paragliding.  This semester has been insane, and though I’m only here for three more weeks, I’m trying not to give it a premature ending.  I hope to keep doing crazy things until the day I get back on the plane to fly back to New York.

Last weekend was a fairly calm weekend, we just stayed in the neighborhood and didn’t do any activities that were too crazy.  On Friday, a group of us hiked Devil’s Peak, a mountain that is part of the Table Mountain range, and the closest mountain to Obz.  Devil’s Peak is the mountain whose tip I can see from my bedroom window, but up until last weekend, we had yet to climb.  After hearing that our Friday Marquette classes were cancelled, we geared up and walked from our house to the Rhode’s Memorial, the starting point of the hike.  The memorial was created for Cecil Rhodes, an important South African politician.

Rhodes Memorial

Panorama From The Rhodes Memorial

After checking out the awesome view from the memorial, we headed uphill.  We didn’t really know the way, nor did we have a map, so we made a few wrong turns and found our fair share of dead ends before we finally got on the right path.  It was definitely one of the toughest hikes I have ever been on, but the views were spectacular.  The higher we got, the more of the city we could see, while keeping our house in view the whole time.  The view was much different than the one from Table Mountain and Lion’s Head because it allowed us to see the suburbs and other areas that were on the other side of Devil’s Peak, usually blocked by it when atop the other mountains.  As we got higher, we could see both sides of the Cape Peninsula, and we had views of both False Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.   

Checking Out The View

Just when we thought we were reaching the top, we realized that we were actually seeing a false face, the real top of the mountain was much higher, and behind the place we had reached.  We continued upward, finally reaching the top after about 3 hours of uphill hiking, but the views were incredible.  It was a beautifully clear day and we had perfect views of the entire city.  After a quick rest, we began the hike down, we were exhausted but it was a much easier trip down, and though we took a different way back, we made it home safely with no wrong turns.  The day turned out to be much more exciting than a regular day of Friday classes!

View From The Top