That’s me on The Beacon, the highest point on Table Mountain.

It started as a scene from a cheesy horror flick: four 20-something women, foreigners in Cape Town, South Africa, embark on a challenging hike up Table Mountain, one of the world’s most magnificent structures. At a gift shop before beginning the hike, a strange man insists they buy a map. But the typically idealistic and unemployed women debate whether the map is worth its 60 rand price tag (less than $10), and believe they can navigate Table Mountain’s miles of unknown terrain using common sense and tidbits of advice from those who have gone before. (In our defense, do you know what you can buy with 60 rand? That’s two salsa classes. Eighteen samoosas. Sixty text messages).

Anywho, this grandfatherly man insists that we buy the map. He tells us of the time he got stuck on Table and had to sleep up there over night. “Did you bring warm clothes?” he asks. “It’s an eight hour hike.” He warns us that the trail can get tricky, but most of the time, we should bear to the right. Some trails are common for muggings, so we’re told to steer clear of those as well, at least after dark. He wishes us good luck, and after he leaves, the cashier gives us the map we were too cheap to buy.

“He bought it for you,” she says. “He didn’t want you on his conscience.”

A round of “awwws” from the group.

So, we go outside, some of us buy food, others use the lu, I go back into the gift shop to make a last-minute purchase.

“You guys haven’t left yet!?” the cashier says when I approach the register. “If you see the clouds coming in, get down the mountain. I remember the last man I warned about that. When the clouds came in, he didn’t get down fast enough. He died.”

“Um…thanks,” I say, avoiding eye contact, smiling uncomfortably.

We leave for our hike, walk through Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens, and then to Skeleton Gorge, which begins as steps made of wooden planks and becomes more intense as we walk up rocks. On the way, we hear tree limbs cracking and footsteps trampling the brush behind us. We turn around. It’s the old man.

OK, just kidding. But with all those warnings to be careful, we thought it really set the scene for something sinister. Actually, we just spent the day doing a really challenging hike.

For me, the neatest part about the experience was seeing how much Table Mountain’s terrain changes. We walked up wooden planks and rocks before climbing a waterfall, and then stumbled upon thick sand that led to a reservoir. At the top of the mountain, we walked over large flat rocks, and then through a thick brush nearly as tall as me.

As you can imagine, the view was breathtaking. It makes you realize how small you really are. But we spent too much time taking it in, recovering from the four-hour, not eight-hour, hike. We punked out. We took the last cable car all the way down.