YEP 12 Africa Expedition – Day 19

Blog written by Seb & Laura

Up early for the table mountain climb, we almost overslept completely as two peoples alarms didn’t go off! But we managed to prepare in time and woke up to the familiar site of Michael & Ben, two staff from our selection camp who were working in Port Elizabeth on the Geberit project. Upon arriving at the foot of the impressive Table Mountain we were also greeted by the Port Elizabeth Young Explorers, making our group of YEPs around 40 strong!

We all started the hike up Table Mountain together and had the opportunity to chat with lots of people form around the world who we haven’t met before, all in the spirit of strengthening the ties between our YEP network. As we climbed higher and higher the wind picked up throwing us around the mountain like leaves and the temperature dropped so we all put on as many layers as possible. Looking around up there you had a 180 degree view of Cape Town city and a fantastic day, we could also see the famous table cloth of clouds that sits just on top of Table Mountain.

We split 100m below the summit into two groups; current Young Explorers along with Mike, and the past Young Explorers. We climbed two different routes, ours called the Staircase, it involved 3 pitches and two short traverses before we arrived at the top of Table Mountain, one of the worlds natural wonders. The climb was really fun and was at a good level of difficulty considering most of us had never properly rock climbed before. We hiked down the other side of Table Mountain through a ravine where Robert and Anika both fell and almost broke their backs. Now we are all sitting in the conference room onboard PANGAEA with all the other Young Explorers and having a great time!