{"id":624,"date":"2016-07-24T20:00:51","date_gmt":"2016-07-24T18:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/raytec.org\/wordpress\/?p=624"},"modified":"2016-08-01T21:56:38","modified_gmt":"2016-08-01T19:56:38","slug":"hiking-simonsberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/raytec.org\/wordpress\/2016\/07\/24\/hiking-simonsberg\/","title":{"rendered":"Hiking Simonsberg"},"content":{"rendered":"

With my colleague and his girlfriend, we today hiked the highest mountain in the vircinity of Stellenbosch: it was the perfect hike for a Sunday. Starting with crispy clear air and bright sun at Tokara Deli, we hiked for about 3 hours (mostly in the shadow of the mighty mountain) to get a wonderful panorama across the Stellenbosch and Franschhoek valley.<\/p>\n

The hike passes first through the vineyards of Tokara and Thelema, then to divert into the wilderness of a forest of Protea, which was burnt in the vast fires of last year (at higher altitude, some Proteas have restarted to grow from the burnt trunks):<\/p>\n

\"P1030657_small\"<\/a>\"P1030665_small\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Still there was frost at this southern slope, but what was particularly beautiful were the carnivorous plants, with tiny drops of nectar trapping flies:\"P1030676_small\"<\/p>\n

The heavy rains the days before had cleansed the air, offering breath-taking views. Consider, Simonsberg wtih 1399m is higher than table mountain. Take this little panorama, where one may see Tokara far below, the whole of Stellenbosch and the Cape-flats, including Cape Town with the majestic Tafelberg:<\/p>\n

\"P1030704\"<\/a>We had an hour-long feast with Boerewors, Karoo cheese, Beer and chocolate from the Neighborgoods Market<\/a>. The descent, the rucksacks were all the lighter; which however didn’t seem to have an impact on the down-hill hiking and scrambling.<\/p>\n

We were totally lucky to have escaped the on-coming clouds:<\/p>\n

\"P1030729_small\"<\/a>Only 30 minutes later from below, the top looked like this (we would’ve been soaking wet):<\/p>\n

\"Top<\/a>

Top of Simonsberg, seen from ~200m from below.<\/p><\/div>\n

And no, this image was not converted to black-and-white!
\nWe passed again the most astonishing eco-system: soil clinging to the rock, bringing to live a wide variety of moss, grasses, ferns, lichens and flowers, even — as well as frogs\/toads whose clicking sound we heard. Yes, toads at about 900 or 1000m height…<\/p>\n

\"P1030731_small\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After hiking for 7 hours (including the 1 hour break), we were happy to report back to Tokara’s gates and to have a great wine and celebrate with Elke and Jonathan our return.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With my colleague and his girlfriend, we today hiked the highest mountain in the vircinity of Stellenbosch: it was the perfect hike for a Sunday. Starting with crispy clear air and bright sun at Tokara Deli, we hiked for about … Weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/raytec.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/raytec.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/raytec.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/raytec.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/raytec.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/raytec.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654,"href":"http:\/\/raytec.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions\/654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/raytec.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/raytec.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/raytec.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}