Cape Town, SOUTH AFRICA – A thousand meters above sea level, 18 pairs of eyes gazed downward.
Far below, gauzy wisps of white thinned and re-formed, revealing glimpses of Cape Town stretching toward the horizon.
When the sun’s rays pieced through, Table Bay flashed like a polished mirror, its crescent curve anchoring the maze of houses, roads, and port structures radiating outward from the shoreline.
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The shift between foggy cloud-cover and complete visibility was sudden but welcome. It was the day students at the Youth Journalism International Global Conference would explore Table Mountain.
The day began in near-total fog, but at that moment, around 2 p.m., the clouds suddenly loosened their grip and revealed a clear view of the city below.
Clouds drifted by at eye level, close enough that – if I did not know any better – I would have been tempted to leap towards them to touch their soft edges. Sitting in a single spot for a few minutes, we could watch entire scenes rearrange themselves.
Our view was a sweeping panorama at one moment, then a single blurred window framing nothing but a ship in the distance the next. Then, with a little more patience, the mist would again slide aside and Cape Town would reassemble itself anew.
Careful not to venture too close to the precipitous edge, we climbed between the rocks to settle beside lichen-flecked slabs and mountain shrubs. From there, Table Mountain delivered the most panoramic perspective we encountered in all our time in Cape Town.
Over the next half hour, we chased the sun.
Intervals of blindness – complete cloud cover, thick fog, and washed-out gray light – were punctuated by brief but brilliant windows of clarity. These sunny intervals felt electrifying precisely because they were fleeting.
Even the moments of fog became oddly compelling. With the trail dissolving into a uniform whiteness, the only orientation came from the speckled patterns of lichen marking irregularly-shaped rock edges.
Still, what we really waited for was that burst of blue.
Whenever sunlight appeared, we scrambled to an overlook, absorbing the perfect ombre from the sky to the bay and the sudden sharpness of every ridge and rooftop.
Our 18 pairs of eyes also experienced two entirely different versions of the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway, the five-minute ride that carries visitors between the lower station and the summit.
These cars take large groups of visitors from the mountain’s lower station to the top in around five minutes, allowing them to transport up to 800 people per hour.
On the ride to the top of Table Mountain, in the thick fog of the morning, it was impossible to distinguish anything much further than the palms of our hands. We could feel the motion of elevation change via the gentle sway of the cabin, but could not see the thousand-foot rise unfolding around us. For all we could tell, we had been ascending into blankness.
But on the way back down, after having witnessed the city and bay around Table Mountain in all its expansive intricateness, the ride could not have been more different. By late afternoon, the sun had committed to staying, and we no longer had to sprint between vantage points to catch it.
As our circular cable car began its descent along the three-line cableway, smoothly rotating a full 360 degrees, its wide-paned windows allowed us to take in everything the morning fog had hidden: the textured cliffs of Table Mountain’s face, winding road leading to the outlook below, geometric patterns of fynbos vegetation, and, at one fleeting moment, the second cable car gliding upward as we passed it in the opposite direction like two metal bubbles briefly aligning before continuing on their mirrored paths.
Our eyes were firmly glued to the landscape.
Bookended by two opposite journeys, our day on Table Mountain was a lesson in how perception changes can create different memories of the same location.
Clouds forced us to reinterpret the landscape moment to moment; sunlight stitched it back together.
In the end, we left with two distinct versions of the same mountain. The sun reappeared.
Annamika Konkola is a Correspondent with Youth Journalism International from the United States. She wrote this article and recorded the audio.
Anya Farooqui is a Reporter with Youth Journalism International from Pakistan. She contributed video reporting.
Norah Springborn is a Senior Correspondent with Youth Journalism International from the United States. She contributed video reporting.
Anjola Fashawe is a Senior Correspondent with Youth Journalism International from London. She contributed video reporting.
Lina Marie Schulenkord is a Correspondent with Youth Journalism from Germany. She took the cable car photo.
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