The famous tableclothĪnother legend is how Table Mountain received its white cascading tablecloth.

It’s called the Hoerikwaggo trail, in honour of the people who gave this iconic mountain its true name. Mountain in the sea is definitely the most appropriate name – the Khoekhoe had been living in the area since long before Europeans even invented tables!Ī five-day hiking trail runs from the tip of Africa to Table Mountain’s summit. The legend is that the Khoekhoe saw the mountain rise from the sea.

The local name of the mountain, used by the indigenous Khoekhoe, is Hoerikwaggo. To the Dutch it was Tafelberg, a name still used in the Afrikaans language. Except they didn’t call it Table Mountain. The name stuck, especially from 1652 when Dutch settlers arrived in the Cape. Local legend has it that Table Mountain was named after the furniture piece when travelers, António de Saldanha (a Portuguese sailor in 1503) and Joris van Spilbergen (Dutch traveler in 1601), commented on the mountain’s flatness. Thanks to great conservation initiatives from SANParks, the park has over 100 well maintained hiking trails, going up, down, around and across the mountain. The national park is an incredible 25 000 hectares in size and continues most of the way to the southwestern tip of Africa. Table Mountain National Park stretches around the city of Cape Town, South Africa. It’s a mountain to explore, as this Table Mountain guide explains.

It’s often said that if you keep the mountain to one side and the Ocean to the other, you can’t get lost in Cape Town.īut again, this isn’t just a mountain to look at. When visitors ask for directions in Cape Town the locals use Table Mountain as the reference. It is a wilderness to explore in the heart of Cape Town.ĭominating South Africa’s Mother City, the magnificent Table Mountain rises between Lion’s Head and Devil’s Peak. Table Mountain is not only a beautiful picture.

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