The San tribes called it Hoerikwaggo, the mountain of the sea, and as our boat chugged towards Cape Town’s Waterfront we could see why. Table Mountain’s massive cliff face appears to rise vertically from the sea, 3 000ft into blue skies.
This is what it must have looked like when the 16th-century explorers sailed into the bay — sea and mountain blending into a huge blue-grey expanse. Like present-day explorers, we disembarked, the three-day Hoerikwaggo Table Mountain trail looming ahead.
The trail, developed by Table Mountain National Park to pack in three of Cape Town’s major attractions, opens on December 1. On the first day, it includes the Waterfront and a four-and-a-half-mile walking history tour of the city; the next day, a trip up Table Mountain in the cable car and a five-and-a-half-mile hike before spending the night on top of the mountain; and, on the last day, the same distance again, ending at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.
We started the history tour in the western flank of the city, the old slave district now known as the Malay Quarter. Imported from the East by the Dutch colonial rulers in the 18th century, the Muslim slaves built colourful houses along cobblestone streets. Many were skilled artisans and homemade signs still advertise the services of carpenters, bricklayers and tailors.
Fast-forward two centuries and cross to the city’s eastern side, where bulldozers flattened District Six in the 1960s when apartheid rules decreed that 50 000 non-whites had to be relocated. At the District Six museum, heart-rending poems and the names of former residents are scribbled on a street grid of the district, painted on the floor.
Our group made it to the wash houses at the foot of the mountain by late afternoon. It is a tranquil spot next to the river where slave women washed laundry in an 18th-century stone building, now converted into compact bedrooms and a living area. The decor has a contemporary African spirit and the linen is crisp and white. Later, we ate a Malay banquet of bobotie, chicken curry and flat bread.
A sunbird-and-guinea-fowl chorus rang in day two, and we took a short, steep walk up the mountain as far as the cable-car station. Last year, it transported its 16-millionth passenger in 75 years.
On top, there was a wildness totally unexpected in the middle of a city of three million people. Although Table Mountain looks flat from below, we hiked over peaks and valleys hidden from view on the tabletop. The landscape is spiked with the colours of fynbos, the unique floral kingdom of the Cape, with more than 1 500 indigenous plant species. Shocking pink pelargoniums, reedy brown restios and patches of purple erica lay like blankets in the hollows. Below us, cloud covered distant peaks all the way to Cape Point, at the southern tip of Africa, about 64km away.
Our overnight hut appeared in a sheltered valley below us. The Overseer’s Cottage dates back to the turn of the last century, when reservoirs were built on the back of Table Mountain to supply Cape Town with water. Renovations on the building began last year, adding wooden decks to the front of the Overseer’s and a side cottage, which now sleep 20 people in two-and three-bed rooms. “Touching the Earth lightly” is the park’s policy.
With ice-cold drinks, we gravitated to the wooden decks as the sun set. The enormous sky met the horizon way off, with a smudge of distant mountain ranges and long white beaches curved around False Bay to the east. As a full moon rose, the city spread its lights around the dark hulk of the mountain, and we fell silent in the solitude, the only people left on top of the mountain. A privileged few.
The last leg of the three-day trail took us down Nursery Ravine into Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens and there was just a touch of smugness among us as we saw waves of visitors disembarking from tourist buses. — Â