Saturday, September 27, 2008

Noon Gun / Lions Head: 27th Sep

Made it

My Last day at LSB and I decided to hike up Lions Head rather than Table mountain. Andy out of LSB said its a better climb with great views so he convinced me to do it instead. To be honest, after 5 nights of severe drinking in a row, I do not think a hike to the top of table mountain was advisable!

Andy kindly offered to give me a lift to the start of the hike as he was going to take photos of the noon gun. I hadn't a clue what he was talking about but it seems that at exactly 12 noon each day they fire a large cannon in Cape town. I accepted the offered and tagged along with him and Chris (also from LSB) to see it. I'm from Belfast so I should be used to big explosions but I was not expecting it to be so loud!



After the gun I was dropped off at the start of the lions head trail to begin my climb. It was a great walk with some great views along the way. Towards the middle / end the walk basically turned into a rock climb which even had ladders at some really steep points.

After just over an hour I reached the summit feeling really pleased with myself for making it up - until I seen 6 year old kids also making it up and mums nonchalently arriving with babies on their backs. It put a bit of a dampener on what I had done!

Another 2 hours of walking, walking and sometimes crawling brought me back to the backbackers.

Table Mountain

Lion's Head

That night as it was my last night in LSB I decided to open my bottle of port and see if anyone at the bar wanted any. I ended up sharing half of it with Mike the security guard. Then it was out to the Dubliner where I met up with the two Irish girls from plet bay for a Quiet night before finally falling back through LSB's door and finishing off the bottle of port with Mike the security.

The next morning I left LSB to head over to the Water front - suffering badly!



Glossary Update:

Q:
Quiet Night
Irish Expression: Rather than drinking heavily in 5 differnt bars and a night club until 2am you stay in the same bar drinking even more heavily until 3am.

S:
Shunt:
German (from Dortmand area) . To have a shit.
- told to me by my two German canoeist friends.

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