Abseiling South Africa's Kamikaze Canyon

By BRONWYN SELL

Halfway down a 65m waterfall in a South African canyon nicknamed Kamikaze is not the best place to wonder if my travel insurance covers abseiling.

My bare feet slip on the rock and I lurch sideways into the icy Thunder Falls. The rushing water spins me around and I lock the rope to stop from falling. The harness catches me and I take a break - and a breathtaking 360-degree spin.

At one degree the rocky waterfall is inches from my face, at 180 a sweeping steep canyon.

In the distance a triangle of faint blue sea sparkles between the cliffs, and somewhere far below among the rocks is a black pool which will end my descent.

A fluffy egret watches me from a nest jutting out across the canyon. I guess one day he too will take this trip ... without the rope.

If you spin the advice is to relax and enjoy the scenery until you stop, and then find your footing again and jump down another step, easing the rope through the clip in your hands.

It's easier than it sounds, partly because the view is so distracting, and partly because the guys who saw me off the edge are either good actors or know what they're doing.

For them, its one giant leap to the bottom, for me a hundred cautious jumps.

The abseil started 30m ago, when I backed blindly over an overhanging rock. I didn't know whether it was a good thing that I couldn't see where I was going.

Then I was apprehensive, now I'm relaxed. I'm getting used to the rhythm of lowering myself - and there is a slight chance of surviving a fall from here.

By the time my cold feet touch the moss at the bottom, the adrenalin has given way to a buzz, and even diving into a freezing black pool can't wipe the grin off my face.

Squinting through the bright sunlight, I can barely see the rock I climbed over to start the descent, and it seems a hell of a long way up.

Kamikaze Canyon - the Cape Town nickname is appropriate - is also a good spot for kloofing, the local word for canyoning: jumping off rocks into pools of water. After making like lizards and warming up on the rocks, we climb again, this time to a ledge 10m above another black pool.

Now any New Zealand kid down at a river would just leap off, yelling, arms flailing, intent on doing the biggest bomb possible.

But there's an art to kloofing. Take a positive leap - a running step or a jump, throw your chest out first, straighten your body, arms by your sides, point your toes, chin up (or you'll get water up your nose), and by the time you've done all that, you're back in dark, icy water, scrambling to the surface because you forgot to breathe on the way down.

Oh, and if you can remember, avoid the boulder directly underneath you.

Been-there-done-that-don't-have-to-do-it-again. Give me a gentle abseil any day.

I'm quite proud of my jump - even if it took me 100 times as long to drum up the courage to step off as it took to reach the water - until Barry Futter, a South African adventurer with a glint in his eye, takes me to the spot of his highest jump.

I put down my backpack and peer over the cliff, hands behind me clutching plants curling out of the rock. It's 23m to the pool, with a couple of jutting rocks on the way. I don't think my survival instinct would let me even stand there without holding on.

But aside from that last bout of nervousness, I'm fearless. We scramble out of the canyon and I'm jumping from rock to rock like Wonder Woman.

These guys - from Abseil Africa - also abseil off Table Mountain, which looms above Cape Town and is worth visiting. You can take the cable-car up, like most people, walk up if you're fit, or run up if you're nuts (like Futter).

The mountain is flat at the top, with few plants, and huge rodents running around. It's an eerie moonlike place when the clouds set in. They clear to reveal a vast picture postcard of beaches, mountains and the city. I can see why Lonely Planet calls this one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

"Let's give the tourists a fright," says Futter, eyes glinting, as we lean on the stone wall at the top. He jumps the wall, leaps off a rock and disappears. I follow.

We scramble down sheer rock faces, squeeze through a cave sideways and edge along the side until we come to a tiny, rocky perch.

Even dangling my feet over the edge feels dangerous. From this height I can't tell if those white things far below are rocks or sheep.

This is a disused abseil starting point, and has got to be one of the world's most peaceful places.

Hang-gliders sweeping and scooping along the coast look as small as birds from here. The 12 Apostles mountain range stands guard to our left, and far below, the city's three million people do the things that Cape Town people do - shopping at the classy Victoria and Alfred waterfront, surfing, carjacking (I'm kidding - it's quite safe here compared with Johannesburg).

Cape Town is famous for its surfing, despite waters on the Atlantic shores that come straight from the Antarctic, and since apartheid ended, the tourism industry has used its beautiful rugged landscapes and oceans to create an adventure tourism market.

It's still a young industry, but there are racks of brochures in the backpackers' hostels. You can plan an adventure that covers the city from top to bottom from skydiving, paragliding, abseiling and mountain biking to surfing, sandboarding, caving, whitewater rafting, 4x4 biking, hiking, scuba diving and diving (with or without sharks).

You can even bungi jump 90m from the Table Mountain cable-car, thanks to a former Auckland man, Devon Touhey, and his brother Braden, who have run the biggest bungi-jump business in town for a decade. (Devon puts his move to Cape Town down to reading too many Wilbur Smith novels.) And finish it all off with a bottle of a local red at sunset, watching whales and dolphins swim in False Bay. Marvellous.

Cape Town is one of the few cosmopolitan cities in the world where the NZ dollar is still worth more than the local currency, and airfares too have dropped considerably in the past five years.

Most young antipodean travellers visit Cape Town as the last stop on an overland Africa tour beginning in Cairo, or on the way back from the Big OE in Europe.

It's the chance to kick back and have fun before returning to reality. Some, like the Touhey brothers, never return.

This Kiwi is going home, after three months in Africa - with bruised legs, a freckled face, a hangover, and even a few rand left in her pocket - all the signs of a good, cheap adventure.

* Bronwyn Sell saw Cape Town with the help of South African Tourism, Adventure Village and Radisson Hotels.

Links:


South African Tourism

Adventure Village

Radisson Hotels