Tunnel Adventure Cape Town

On 6th of March CPSS and some friends met for an underground adventure of a different kind. We traded our bat cave for for a rat’s tunnel, and went underground below the street of Cape Town.

The meet was guide by Matt Wiese, who runs a tour operation specialising in these historical tunnels, if you would like to experience this part of cape town, then take a look at his companies website. http://www.goodhopeadventures.co.za/tunnel-tours
We all met at the Castle of Good Hope to sign in and then arrange a lift club to the top of town where our adventure began, but before leaving some vital preparation was need so that we could exit the tunnel.

The ladder is dropped down into the tunnel and secured so that when we need to surface we still have a ladder waiting for us. We got into our convoy and regrouped in the parking lot of the entrance manhole.

In no time our first tunnel explorer was inside and ready to go. Once we were all below the surface, the manhole was put back in place, we were ready share the journey of the mountain water running down the Platteklip River, before it enters the ocean, something which is being addressed by the Reclaim Camissa project.
Read more on how the Reclaim Camissa project is trying to save this water and put it to use for the City of Cape Town. This is a short excerpt from the project page.
CAMISSA, meaning ‘the place of sweet waters’ is the ancient Khoi name for Cape Town. Embedded, lost and obscured within the city’s fabric this vital ecological and cultural link still exists…. LET’S RECLAIM CAMISSA, TOGETHER.
With this in mind we set off on our journey. The begin of the tunnel requires a little crouching, but pretty soon, we were all upright and walking normally.

A little stream of crystal clear water was flowing, and the wellington boots did well to keep it out.
As we continued Matt explained the history behind the tunnels as we walked single file and adjusted to the slippery bricks.

We walked under manhole covers and could see the cars above whizzing over them, often with a dull thud as they drive over the it.

As cavers we were happy to be able to follow a passage and know where it leads, and to be able to walk and not crawl for a change, but also to see the calcite formations, resembling the stalactites seen in Cango.


We really enjoyed these pretty formations, proving that even in a sewer you can find beauty.

Our tour was nearing the end, and as we continued in the tunnel it became clear how through the years work was done on the canals evident by the type of bricks and colour of them.


Take notice the change of colour between the bricks in these pictures. The canals were used until a plague broke out in Cape town, after which they were sealed to create the circular tunnels which you see today.

The below picture is of the junction where a different tunnel servicing District 6 meets the Buitenkant tunnel.

We returned to our trusty ladder, and made a safe exit into the grounds of the Castle.

It was a historically educational tour and overall a good morning out. Thanks to Matt for taking us once again.

Tunnel underground tour

Subject: What an Adventure - walking the "Tunnels" under the Cape Town Castle!

Goodhopeadventures organised another super outing - my kind of adventure. A few hours walking with a most professional leader through the Tunnels that run under the Cape Town Castle and under most of the streets in the downtown Cape Town area with the water running out into the sea in the old Harbour. It was a perfect day and some 18 of us received a well organised briefing and handed in our Indemnity forms, donned our hard hats supplied and with the arrival of a qualified professional Rescue Medic walked past the castle Moat to a stormwater drain (see pic) and descended a ladder into the labyrinth of tunnels that run under our city. I did not know what to expect? Cool & cold sloshing through a foot of water running down the mountain through the old sewerage tunnels or hot and humid with all funny "goggas" rats & porcupines, spiders, frogs, crabs, cockroaches and fighting through spider webs? Going down the manhole cover was fun and we soon got accustomed to the dark in the tunnel. It was possible to walk upright. With torches we proceeded to follow our leader Matt Weisse from goodhopeadventures who had done an early morning recce to see that all was in order. As he predicted it was excellent and although 4 degrees lower than ground level we could walk in T shirts.

The water must have been about 6" deep and not too slippery and an easy slow walk being briefed on the construction from initial Jan van R times to the closing into a tunnel by the Brits after the 1830's. Really solid and well constructed. Plenty of sewer pipes along the way and we soon came to the junction with the Kaizergracht tunnel running up to the old District Six.

There was cabling in the tunnel for lighting put in for movies being "shot" here - specifically "Fear Factor" - a TV series. We walked to where we would have been under Strand street and could hear the motor cars on the road directly above us and the trains in the Cape Town station. It was all so very clean and the flowing water pristine - Brian Kirsch commented that it is hard to believe we have these millions of gallons of fresh water running out to sea! It was indeed a wonderful experience that I can recommend to anybody nutty enough to want to go down a manhole cover into the bowels of the earth and splish splash through a running stream. A thrilling experience and adventure!