Our First Family Hike

Over the weekend we thought we’d go on a hike.  Cool.  The kids were on board, got up and dressed pretty quickly – which is highly unusual in and of itself.  Kyla even packed a bag with her essentials which included a kitten shaped lip gloss, a scarf, two long sleeved t-shirts (one for her and one for Riya), a brush, a couple of stuffed toys, some water and about 42674 other things that I don’t feel like remembering.  Totally just the essentials you know?

Anyway, I joked on our Instagram that this is how it went down.  And give or take about 345 complaints, a couple of falls with scraped and bleeding knees and a whole lot more hangry, this account is pretty accurate.  There is probably still some of the video on our stories if watching the real life stuff is your thing.  (It’ll be there till about 1pm I think).

• At 9am we decided to hike up one of the beautiful Cape Town mountains. We were optimistic and happy.
• At 10am we decided on Elephants Eye.  Did some research.  Spoke about taking a swim in the dam at Silvermine. Yes!
• At 11am we made it to the door.  Most snacks packed, water in bottles and nearly everyone had their shoes and hats on. Slightly flustered.
• At 11.30am we finally left the house.  Needed to stop at the shop to get real food for lunch. Decided on Lions Head instead of Elephants Eye because of recent attacks in that area. The kids were pissed.  They wanted to swim.
• At 12pm we were all lathered up with sunblock and started up Lions Head.  It was hot.
• At 12.01 I heard the first complaint. Ugh
• At 12.15 we stopped in a shady spot. Melting
• At 12.32 we stopped again. Sweating and red faced.
• At 12.45 we stopped for a break. Need water! Hoping break will stop incessant complaining.
• At 12.46 we noticed it had NOT stopped the steady stream of complaints.
• At 12.55 Riya fell going up one of the steps.  Screamed so loudly I was worried about starting a rock fall.  Poor sausage.  She rallied pretty quickly though.
• At 13.15 we gave up and turned around. (We hadn’t even gone one full circle around around Lions Head).  I’m sure you can understand that we were a bit miffed at not actually succeeding in actually arriving at our destination.
• At 13.45 Riya fell again going down the mountain.  This time resulting in blood and dust making a mucky mess down her leg.  She didn’t cry.  I was really proud of her.
• At 14.00 we finished our first family hike irritated and hangry.

We ended up at Clifton 4th so all in all it really wasn’t a bad day.  Next time we’ll plan it just a lot better.

The funny thing is that Seth took both girls up Lion’s Head when they were 5 and 6.  So it’s not like they haven’t already done it.

But granted, it was so hot I was actually sweating.  I can probably count on one hand the amount of times that I have had actual sweat drip down from my brow.  But yesterday it was coursing down in buckets.  It was pretty gross.  So yes, we did choose the wrong time to start in the heat of Cape Town Summer.  Hopefully we’ve learned from this (but let’s be real, we’re totally going to do this again).

Next time we’ll find an easier hike to do.  The thing is, we can’t just do a walk, we need a cool destination at the end of the walk otherwise they will just be over it before we even begin.  Any advice on easy-ish walks with cool things at the end?  Like waterfalls and the like.  Not that there’s enough water for waterfalls right now, but you know what I mean.

Do you hike?  Which is the best hike you have done in the Cape Town area?