At some point around 3 a.m., I stopped pretending I was going to rest and just lay there listening to windows rattling, something outside clattering down the street, and the feeling that the Cape was reminding me of things I’d forgotten after too long abroad.

In my state of not sleeping, my mind started wandering down all kinds of paths, until I eventually started looking up the worst storm the Cape had ever had, and how long it lasted.

A dangerous line of inquiry. Once you start reading about Cape storms, it becomes strangely absorbing, and suddenly you’re deep in the weather history of the Mother City.

The Great Gale of 1902 is still spoken about along the coast—a storm that tore through the region and wrecked ships along the Eastern Cape, including Algoa Bay.

“Big Wednesday” in 2001 saw a 17-metre wave recorded off Slangkop near Scarborough shortly after the cargo ship Ikan Tanda ran aground in one of the Cape’s more violent episodes.

The cut-off low in 2017 brought Cape Town and the surrounding towns to a standstill. Local media dubbed it “the mother of all storms,” while Weather Service forecasters called it “one hell of a storm.”

In 1978, a 20.5-metre wave was recorded off Cape Point, a height so extreme it takes a moment to translate it into anything familiar. A six-storey building, made of moving water.

And then, inevitably, the reading pulls you further back.

Because none of it quite matches what happened in May 1865. Back then, Table Bay was not the protected harbour it is today. Ships lay exposed at anchor, entirely at the mercy of whatever the Atlantic decided to send in.

In the second week of May, the weather had been deceptively calm with warm days and light winds. Then the barometer dropped, the wind shifted hard to the north-west, and calm gave way to something else entirely.

For eighteen hours, the Great Gale tore through the bay.

By the time it passed, dozens of ships had been wrecked, and around sixty lives lost.

Among the last to go was the RMS Athens.

Captain David Smith made one final attempt to escape, turning for open water as the storm closed in. But by nightfall, the ship was being pushed back toward Mouille Point, barely making headway against wind and sea that had turned the bay unrecognisable.

At around 8 p.m., word reached shore that a vessel was on the rocks near the lighthouse. People gathered, trying anything they could to send help through the surf. But the ocean wasn’t in the mood for negotiations.

By morning, Captain Smith and his crew were gone.

The ship had been reduced to wreckage scattered across the shore.

Legend has it that the sole survivor was a pig that somehow made it through the surf and swam ashore.

When you spend enough time reading about it at 3 a.m. during a storm, you start to realise something else too.
We’re not the first people to be kept awake by it.
And it doesn’t really feel like it has finished with us.

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Over the last few days, I’ve been in bed resting my knee. I’ve known about it for a while, but like most things involving my body and common sense, I chose optimism over caution.

How did I get here? There’s a short answer and a more entertaining one.

Last week, I went hiking with my friend Dicky and his dog Bowie at Kloovenburg wine estate, beneath the slopes of Kasteelberg.

Dicky even sent me the route maps in advance, which I appreciated in principle. Of course, I looked at them, but nothing really made it into long-term memory.

At the farm, we were greeted by a committee of Labradors, all cream-coloured and all named after wine. One was Chardonnay. Another, wearing a plastic cone—the kind dogs get after a visit to the vet, often called a “cone of shame”—was called Crimson.

Crimson had an injured leg. This did not appear to be part of his personal plan. He ran around anyway, with the confidence of someone ignoring both medical advice and narrative foreshadowing.

We briefly returned him to reception, where the staff accepted him with the calm of people who have seen this before. Chardonnay joined us instead, presumably promoted to “responsible one.”

We set off.

It had rained the day before, and the morning had that clean, washed clarity you only get after rain. The vines were beginning to turn to autumn colours; some still deep green, others edging into rusty brown. For about a kilometre, everything was ideal: soft views, good weather, and dogs running happily along. Four kilometres sounded almost modest.

Then the path started to tilt upward into the kloof.

At this point, I remembered I had once hiked Duiwelskloof in Swellendam, which I now use as a kind of baseline for questionable decisions—something along the lines of: I survived that; therefore, this should be fine.

It was not.

I saw their droppings first; soon after, I heard them nearby. There is something about hearing baboons in the wild that is, to put it mildly, unsettling.

Around the same time, my knee began to voice its own opinion loudly and without negotiation. Between the baboons and the knee, I decided I had experienced enough character development for one morning.

I turned back.

Dicky continued upward, because some people read maps and some people become legends. We agreed to reconvene later, ideally in a situation involving fewer primates.

Going down the kloof turned out to be its own adventure. Gravity, I discovered, is more enthusiastic on the return journey.

The baboons stayed out of sight but remained committed to the soundtrack. I, meanwhile, developed a strong working relationship with nearby trees, which I now regard as essential infrastructure.

At one point, a stone gave way beneath my foot. I followed it for a short distance before we mutually agreed to stop.

Eventually, the sound of baboons faded, replaced by vineyards and the reassuring geometry of cultivated land. Civilisation returned quietly, as it tends to when you have not died.

The mountain had won, but only on technical points.

Back at the start, Dicky reappeared, still in possession of dignity and altitude. Crimson was there too, behaving as if rules were more of a suggestion. I briefly considered that Crimson and I were not so different.

We ended the day by a fireplace with wine and olives, where the friendly cellar master explained fermentation with calm authority. I took a long sip of Sauvignon Blanc. It was bright, tropical, and entirely unconcerned with knees. I even bought a bottle to take home. It is still in my fridge, waiting for a special occasion.

Now I’m back in bed. My leg is recovering, my pride is fine, and my future hiking plans will, for the foreseeable future, involve fewer slopes that “look manageable from a distance.”

Which, in fairness, is how most bad decisions begin.

Kasteelberg, it turns out, is not quite like the rest of the Swartland I thought I knew. On a previous hike (Hiking at Summers End), the landscape was all renosterveld, muted and dry, the soil as tired-looking as the plants it carried. Here, before the baboons and my knee began negotiating my descent, I had noticed something different. The vegetation had shifted to fynbos, a sign that the mountain sits on different ground. I later learned there are many caves scattered across the range. Like most mountains, it carries the sense that there is always more just out of reach.

At its foot, Kloovenburg offers a more reassuring rhythm. The farm dates back to the time of Simon van der Stel and has been in the Du Toit family since the 1950s. Today, it is all olives, wine, and an easy kind of hospitality—friendly people, excellent Sauvignon Blanc, and Labradors that greet you as if your return, successful or not, was always part of the plan.

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