Extreme Day

Beautiful Cape Town has a huge range of outdoor activities, from shark cage diving, sky-diving, beach horse-riding, surfing, sandsurfing and many others. We decided within the group to have an 'extreme day'. For some of us it was an extreme scripting or editing day or an extreme shopping day. After doing research everybody had made their choice for the day.

I decided to try, for the first time in my life, a kind of canyoning locally called 'Kloofing’. Before Kloofing I thought a small dose of adrenaline would be a good warm-up. Driven by this idea, together with Luiza who’s always ready for adventure, we found ourselves on the top of Table Mountain. Stunning view! On top its flat and kilometers long. Like a wild fairytale land, but the edge ends up with 1000m high drop. So, of course, my strongest desire was to abseil down! I have never really done it before, but I knew I wanted to do it. Even though there were a few unsure, soft legged, adrenaline charged moments, when you are not able to imagine what would happen! I was the last client on that day and because of that I had to go down alone. There would be somebody waiting for me at the bottom I was told. The guys were tired after hanging out the whole day in the sun, bored and keeping themselves busy by telling jokes. Not the most ideal feeling of security! After a short know-how intro, people were just disappearing mysteriously behind the edge of the rock 1000m over sea level... one last wave to your friends and off you go!
So did I. Still unsure of the technique it took me the first, 10 breathless meters to understand either I do it right and enjoy or I have no other choice :-)

Take a deep breath or two, stop, enjoy the views... and then just the half of my brain, in permanent adrenaline shock was controlling the hand steering the rope and my legs walking down the mountain, while the other half was howling for the beauty of the world and could just not believe what my eyes saw. I was just hanging alone, too small to be seen on the huge mountain canvas, forgotten by the world, together with the sun, sky, ocean, never-ending space, mind play, on a 112 meter long walk...

Then, the rock finished. They call it 'a little surprise' – the ground disappears and you swing on the rope in space...it's the best and you never want it to finish....

Next was an intense wild hike up the mountain, and it took a good 20 minutes and a lot of sweat.

The instructions were easy; on the right is death, on the left – life... We saw an incredible huge eagle patrolling the landscape from the neighbouring edge of the mountain... Getting the taste of the mountains I was even more excited for the next day... the even more challenging Kloofing experience...