Josh's exciting adventure

Friday February 26^th, 2016

2:47pm – One of my good friends Ryan from the US who I went to high school with facebook messages me that he has arrived in Cape Town and asks if I want to hike table mountain with the friends he is staying with.

3:11pm – I see the message and respond that I have a skype call from 4-4:45pm.

3:22pm – Ryan responds saying that they will be meeting at 4pm to start the hike.

3:33pm – Ryan tells me that they are hiking up skeleton gorge and sleeping on the mountain

3:36pm – I tell Ryan that I am going to try to make the skype call really quick, then get to the mountain and run up behind them and try to catch them before they get to the top of the mountain

4:00pm – I hop on the skype call and finish by 4:25pm.

4:26pm – I call the taxi company and the dispatcher says a taxi will be there in 10 minutes.

4:45pm – I call the taxi company and ask where the taxi cab driver was?  I was assured it was on its way and would be there in the next couple minutes.

4:53pm – The taxi cab finally arrives and we head over to the mountain.  (The taxi cab driver was awesome, his daughter lives in Dubai and he used to work as a planner within the field of technology I believe for the South African government.  He’s driving taxis as a transitional period leading up to him wanting to go teach English abroad and then start a second career.)

5:15pm – I purchase my ticket and start the run up the mountain.

5:45pm – After a hard run with heavy breathing I see a large group hiking up the actual rock gorge.  And I see my friend Ryan waiting up there for me. 

After not seeing Ryan for a couple years (he had moved out to California the second he graduated with his Mom and I hadn’t seen him since I was in California for a work conference in April, 2015), we were reunited on a completely different continent!  We spent the night in a cabin that, the girl Ryan is staying with, Anna’s friend rented through someone he knows who used to be a boy scout.  The night was an absolute blast.  There were a bunch of high-schoolers there (Anna’s brothers friend) and UCT students from South Africa and Zimbabwe.  We had fun with card tricks/mind games all night.  Since I was not prepared (I didn’t bring a blanket, a pillow or enough clothes) I was freezing and didn’t sleep well, so the second the sun was up I went outside.  In the distance I saw a large peak, near where apparently there used to be an old cable station on the side of Table Mountain by Camps Bay.  So I put my mind to climbing up it.  After scaling the large rock wall to get to the top of the peak I came down.  Then we all hiked down Table Mountain on the backside of the mountain via the nursery route.  Our final landing point was in the middle of Kirstenbosch gardens.  My friend Ryan and I had a great time catching up on the way down just talking about our dreams and passions.

Although my idea to run up behind them and catch them on Friday may have been a bit ambitious, and I was definitely underprepared in the food and clothing department (you could bring all types of food and they had a kettle to boil water in and an open fire to make a braii, which I was unaware of), the trip was by far one of the most exciting times I have had outside of the program while in South Africa.  On Friday night when we came back inside to a fire after stargazing, my friend Ryan summed it up well – “no matter where you are in the world, people are people”.  We may have different amounts of resources, some may be wealthier than others, we may represent different races/cultures, etc. but at the end of the day people are people.  And for us that meant regardless of the different backgrounds we all came from, we were able to enjoy such a simple of conversation with one another.