Devil's Peak

Yesterday a group of us climbed part of Devil's peak, which is the mountain that goes right up from the UCT campus. To start, we took a Jammie shuttle to upper campus, then hiked to Rhodes Memorial, and then got on the trail from there. We didn't get to the very top because it started to get too dark, but the views from where we did get were amazing. It was a really tough hike, mostly because it was so steep. There wasn't much winding around the mountain, more like going almost straight up it. We were going for a little over four hours total, and at parts we were literally climbing up rock faces, concentrating only on not looking down at the drop! We were a little worried going up because all of the South Africans were on their way down already and we were the only people actually heading up...they kept telling us that we were too late and that it was going to get dark, but we were just going to go as far as we thought we could with still having enough time to get down. We ended up making it past the dangerous parts as the sun was setting, and only had to walk about 20 minutes in the very dark. When we were getting back to upper campus, which is about a 30 minute walk from our house, it was very dark, and we weren't too excited about walking all the way home. We didn't know the schedule of the Jammie shuttles so didn't think we'd be able to wait for one. But just as we got to the end of the trail we saw one, and we all ran after it, and it actually stopped! I think driver must have sensed our desperation. Either that or he realized we weren't going to stop running until we caught up. :)



A view of some of the city from a little ways up the mountain...