Cape Town!

Do forgive me, but I was on vacation for the next few entries, so they will sound a little travelogue-ish. I'm no Paul Theroux (thank goodness), but hopefully you will find Cape Town, the Winelands, and Addo Elephant Park as beautiful as my friend Lynn and I did.

Cape Town itself is a beautiful, modern city which reminded me most of San Francisco. Like San Fran, it is set right on an ocean, at the beginning of the Cape Peninsula in the southwesternmost part of Africa. Like San Francisco, it is very hilly. During the time I was driving in Cape Town, I had to use the emergency break just to avoid sliding backwards on the hills. Also like San Francisco, there is a former prison in the harbor which has now been turned into a tourist attraction. Not far outside Cape Town lie gorgeous valleys full of vineyards. Finally, it is known as one of South Africa’s most liberal cities, and the home of SA’s gay community. Sound familiar, no?


Cape Town, at least the central and formerly all-white areas of it, is thoroughly modern. Car whizz by at all hours. When night falls, the city is awash in electric light. Posters advertise for coming concerts, movies, and stage plays. Internet cafes have broadband connections, and travelers sit in them with earplugs and microphones, using Skype to takl to family back home. Huge western-style malls are packed with goods. During the trip, I probably spent 12 total hours just browsing around the malls, half of that time in a Borders-like chain store called Exclusive Books. I was so happy that there were books to buy!


Then, there was food. After four months of eating mostly rice and veggies, goat, pasta with butternut, and oshifima with canned fish, the breadth of food choices overwhelmed me, and I gorged myself. In only six days, Lynn and I tried Middle-Eastern (complete with belly dancer and hookah), Italian, Portugese, pizza, Caribbean, and a traditional pub-style burger and fries. There was always a part of a Cadbury’s bar, not available in my town up north, in one of our backpacks for snacking. I think I regained about 10 of the pounds that I lost!


We also hit the major tourist highlights of Cape Town and learned about its history. First, we walked around the Bo-Kaap area, a brightly coloured neighborhood that has traditionally been home to the Cape’s Malaysian Muslim community. That’s right, Malaysian Muslims. When whites first arrived in the area, there were indigenous Khoi and San peoples already on the land, but they were nomadic pastoralists and hunter-gatherers. The population density was thus very low. As the whites began to use intensive agricultural techniques, they had to import labor from Malaysia and from the Zulu and Xhosa areas which lay far to the east. The Bo-Kaap area was where many of the Malays settled, and the minarets of several mosques rise above the primary-color palette of the houses.

Another highlight was Table Mountain. This large mountain, which has a flat, table-like top, is smack dab in the center of the city. The city surrounds the mountain on all sides, but the mountain itself is a national park festooned with hiking trails. We joined up with two Peace Corps Volunteers, Jason & Janet, and took a cab to the Kirstenbosch Botannical Garden to begin our hike. I wish that my uncle Ed could have come with us to the Garden, because he would have adored it. The grounds were huge and featured species native to southern Africa. One of the specialties of the Cape environment is called fynbos, which literally translates as “fine bush.” These are small bushes that are adapted to grow in the misty, damp, 'Mediterranean' climate of the cape.

After the gardens, we began our climb up Nurse’s Gorge, a steep valley with a trail that went straight up, including some scrambling, for well over an hour. Luckily, most of that hike we were in cool shade. When we got to the top of the gorge, we found huge rocks looking south, and sunned ourselves on them for half an hour before moving on. After a couple more hours hiking, we found ourselves at the edge of the flattop ridge that gives Table Mountain its name. From here, we looked down onto the high rise buildings and wealthy houses of central Cape Town. To the left, the outlines of the smaller hills named Lion’s Head and Lion’s Rump were visible. Robben’s Island, where Nelson Mandela spent about 20 years in prison, lay far out in Table Bay. The view was stunning, and the pictures hardly do it credit.




After five days in Cape Town, much eating, and a visit to see the play Doubt (which I highly recommend), it was time to rent a car and get out of Cape Town. We did just that, and I jumped into the right-hand drive car, drove the wrong way down the road, and headed straight for wine country!