Saturday, April 3rd, 2010
Devil’s Peak, part of Cape Town’s central mountain range, sits right next to Table Mountain. It’s a pretty steep climb – takes a while to climb, and apparently ought to require a waiver for the hike. The peak, along with Table Mountain, is often shrouded in thick, fluffy clouds. There’s a great little story about how it got it’s name, as well as why it’s so cloudy. Here it is:
Jan van Hunks, a prodigious pipe smoker, lived at the foot of the mountain around 1700. He was forced by his wife to leave the house whenever he smoked his pipe, given the amount he liked to smoke. One day, while smoking his pipe on the slopes of the peak, he met a mysterious stranger. They each bragged of how much they smoked and so they fell into a pipe-smoking contest. They smoked all day, and all night, covering the whole mountain in the tablecloth cloud that has stuck around even today. Van Hunks finally won the contest, and learned that the stranger he had beaten was, in fact, the Devil.