The top of the table

Today a group of us began the overnight trek of the People's Trail. We saw one of many freshwater dams at the top of the table that supply the city of Cape Town with drinking water, which was cool. I've always had a penchant for water systems. However, I also drank liters of the water straight from the waterfalls along the trail out of necessity and also because everyone said that, in spite of it's brown color, it is incredibly safe. For someone who spent four years at university studying waterborne diseases and who was hospitalized with dysentery in Vietnam, I was not eager to partake. The romance of the notion of drinking "straight from the source" was absolutely lost on me; I was actually amazed at how everyone else totally jived with this idea, as if there was some sort of yuppy factor inherent in partaking (not that I've anything against yuppies, I like organic apples just like the rest of them)... but I was desperate. The water itself tasted a bit like lukewarm dirt stew, like the magic potions Annie and I'd mix in the backyard when we were tiny -- with the obvious exception that there were no milkweed pods in this particular brew and we always added milkweed pods -- but it did not make me sick, thank the Lord.

P.S. This picture was taken on the plateau on the "tabletop"