Sunset/full moon lion’s head hike

A few Sundays ago a big group of us decided to hike Lion’s Head to watch the sunset and see Cape Town lit up under a full moon. Turned out, everyone else visiting Cape Town had the same idea, which made for a little different hiking experience. There were so many people hiking up the mountain that a lot of the time you had to walk super slow or basically wait in line until you could keep making your way up.

Finally we made it to the top though and luckily some of the people from our group were able to make it up quickly so they had a nice place staked out for us. Watching the sunset from up there was amazing. It was really fun to get to sit up there with all our friends, pass around a couple bottles of wine, and take in the city we’ve been living in for the past 3 months from on top of the mountain.

After the sun finally dipped beneath the horizon, we decided to try and hit the trail before all these other people tried to do the same. It proved to be much more hectic than we had hoped. Even though it looked like everyone in Cape Town was on top of Lion’s Head, many were heading down at the same time we were and even more were still trying to make their way up. It was dark so we had our cell phones in our mouths pointing the flashlight at the end (a handy little feature I’m going to miss) towards the ground and trying to scale down the boulders and somehow fight against both the others going down and the crowds still going up. It was a mess until we finally got towards the bottom where the ground was even.

Despite the strange experience of hiking with a bazillion people, the view was more than worth it and I would definitely suggest you do it if you ever find yourself in Cape Town when there’s a full moon!