Atop Table mountain

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007: Sampling the reservoirs atop Table mountain was an adventure. We left CSIR at around 8.30 am. We took a scenic route that took us through touristy Muizenberg, a little town on the coast but not before we saw Khayelitshe an informal settlement. We arrived at the foot of Table mountain around 11 am and had to get clearance to go up the mountain from the officials in charge of the park. Part of the group went up the mountain in a 4 x 4. The rest of us were to be picked up afterwards. That was not to be, after waiting for a few minutes we got a call from the first group saying we should walk up on one of the trails. Harvesting of trees was taking place, and we could hear the crashing of trees in the distance, big cranes that looked more like dinosaurs had already made the trail we chose almost impassable. Nevertheless we trudged upwards along the muddy path. There was one scary episode when Vernon from the CSIR yelled for us to run, a tree had just been felled. The only problem was we didn’t know which direction to go to. In retrospect it’s kind of funny to think of Chantelle, Susan, Vernon and Rob Jr. trying to run in sticky mud with arms flailing in a panic. Luckily, we didn’t have to walk all the way since Joy picked us up in the car when we were almost halfway up. And she was right on time because we were quite exhausted by then.

The view as one goes up the mountain is lovely, Cape Town is down in the valley with the mountains in the distance. The land is green, red roofs are visible and white washed cottages dot the landscape. A haze hung above the city, smog presumably.
The reservoirs at the top of the mountain are pristine ponds nestled among the craggy rocks. They were built in the 1900s and they provide fresh water to certain areas in the Cape region. We sampled Hely Hutchinson and De Villiers. We collected water samples, sediment cores and some biota. The water especially at the shores looked a lot like Rooibos tea. Rooibos is a wild shrub whose leaves are used to make tea. Rooibos is Afrikaans for Red bush. The tea is said to have antioxidant properties. It’s really good and Terill and I have become huge fans already. The drive and walk (for some of us) down the mountain was uneventful. On the way home, we had a late lunch of fish and chips at a little eatery called Fish on the Rocks right on the shores of Hout Bay.