Table Mountain – Pulling the table cloth over – Featured Blog

Table Mountain.  Probably the most iconic attraction in South Africa.  Something every visitor to the country wants to visit.  Being in the tourism industry I often get asked about Table Mountain by visitors and one piece of advise I always give is to go to the mountain at the first opportunity you get.  I was guided a tour down the Garden Route to Cape Town and on arrival in Cape Town we noticed the mountain was open.  There was bad weather forecasted and both the driver and I urged the tour leader to change the itinerary so that we could go straight to the mountain.  He didn’t want to as we had four days in Cape Town before they flew out and there would be more than enough time.  Needless to say, the left without being able to go up.

The main reason for somebody not being able to visit the mountain is wind and often with the wind comes the table cloth.  There is a legend about the table cloth going back to the early days of the Cape.  It goes that the devil challenged a local called Van Hunks to a smoking contest on the mountain and after days of continuous smoking lost.  It is said that the table cloth appears every time Van Hunks and the devil decide to have a rematch up on Devil’s Peak.  On my last visit they had a little puff, but not a full on competition.  Perhaps next time again.  Although it would mean I wouldn’t be able to see my mountain.

This was my favorite photo from our visit to the Kouga Dam in the Gamtoos Valley to see it overflowing. I just slapped I with a bit of HDR to give it a bit of a more striking look. A dam like this overflowing is always a sight to behold.