Soaring Over Cape Town - From Lion's Head

Off to save the day! I would save so much on cab fare.

I've been putting this post off for nearly a week. I sat down to sort through photos and write it up, but gave up when Photoshop quit, taking three of my panoramas with it. After sulking for a few days, it seems like a nice Saturday afternoon has been the cure for this. Take two...

I mentioned a few days ago that I'd be hiking Lion's Head Mountain. Well, here is the deal: You may remember that Lion's Head is one of the features that can be seen from Table Mountain, as you overlook the city. It is far smaller, and much more isolated, coming to more of a peak than a plateau. It is a very popular Cape Town pastime to hike to top for sunset, but especially around full moon, because of this...

On the night of a full moon, a look to the west from atop Lion's Head will have a beautiful sunset over the ocean. And at the same time, a look to the east will have a full moon rising above the city of Cape Town, among all of the blues and purples on the opposite horizon of a sunset. And since this is the cape, a look to the other directions offers mountains, Robben Island, the shipyard, and more ocean. I had to see for myself.

After an hour ascent, the first thing I noticed upon reaching the top was that the excellent view of Table Mountain really shows the distance from the top to the bottom. You'll remember from when I hiked Table Mountain, we got stranded on the top, without a running cable car, around sunset. We then descended down thousands of feet as quick as we could, ending the last half hour of the hike in the dark with cell phone lights. Well, here is where we started and where we ended, for a bit more perspective:

Our frantic starting and ending points.

Back to Lion's Head. Luckily, Kara and I chose to do the hike the night before the "official" full moon, and we couldn't tell a difference. There weren't that many people, only about 50. Most of them were students from a local high school Geography class. I made friends with them. They attempted to repeat where I am from, something like Winsconskin (it was even on my shirt!).

My fears about how many people would show up were for naught. Things were way more hectic the next night, though, when my roommates went to find hundreds of others. After a few random photos, I posted up my tripod along with a photographer (trying to act like I was in the big leagues).

The sun began to set:

Time for the panoramas. In the opposite direction:

The moon rising over the city.

A look to the north.

And now the money shots:

The full view. Nearly 360º.

From full moon to sunset. This is 21 different photos, so they didn't blend perfectly. Still worth it.

And night falls over Cape Town.

The full moon helped offer enough light for most of the hike down, until we got on the dark side (dun dun dunnn!), and the trusty Nokia 1200 came back out. There is also a general caution for crime in the area, since it is nighttime, and there are mostly tourists with cameras and cell phones, etc. But there was a policeman on a four wheeler that came down with us for a bit, so we didn't get stabbed or otherwise maimed. All in all, it was incredible.