I was pretty out of it when I arrived around midday on Wednesday, so after getting settled in the guesthouse I just went for a brief walk and visited the Slave Lodge museum. Having grown up in the United States, my knowledge of the African slave trade only goes in one direction; however, it turns out that when Cape Town was being established as a stopping point for European ships passing around the Cape of Good Hope, the Dutch East India Company brought people from Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, and (eventually) Madagascar to Cape Town as slaves. Apparently, doing so made sense because
people from those areas already had skills the Company viewed as desirable, and therefore (unlike slaves from nearer locations) did not need to be trained. The Slave Lodge museum is housed in the building where most of them lived. After my walk, Sha-Mayn's friends Jazmyne and Brett (as well as their adorable daughter, Asia) picked me up for dinner by the beach in Camps Bay. I went for a guided hike up Table Mountain the next morning; a cablecar will also take you up, but where's the fun in that? Instead, we got to see a gorgeous sunrise, so many birds, and several different plants, some of which were flowering even though it's technically still winter. Apparently there are more different plant species on the mountain than in all of the United Kingdom. The hike involved some seriously fun rock scrambles, but the most fun was probably the shocked looks we received from people riding up on the cablecar. My performance was less than exemplary, I'm afraid; hopefully I can blame it on jet lag, the remnants of my cold, or forgetting to take my vitamin in the morning -- otherwise, Kilimanjaro is going to be... interesting. Still, we made it up in around three hours (the record, albeit on a different route, is around 20 minutes).
After Vijay arrived in the early afternoon, we took a tour of the Bo Kaap area. The people brought to Cape Town as slaves lived in this area (it isn't entirely clear to me how/when the transition from the Slave Lodge occurred), and celebrated their eventual emancipation by painting the formerly monotonously gray buildings bright, vibrant colors. According to the guide, the community remains incredibly close knit and the area is very strictly protected in an effort to maintain not only the buildings and the area's physical appearance, but also its unique culture.
My birthday began with carrot cake for breakfast, then a somewhat choppy hour long boat ride to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent eighteen of his twenty-seven years in prison. Interestingly, the island has a lengthy history as a place for holding political prisoners; early Dutch settlers also there imprisoned local tribal leaders who fought against European settlement and leaders from Asia who fought against colonization there. It also served as a leper colony and, during World War II, as a military base. A former political prisoner led our tour of the maximum security prison, reminding me how recently the events we were learning about occurred.
After a (significantly less choppy) return boat ride and a quick lunch on the waterfront, we took the longer hop-on hop-off bus to the other side of Table Mountain to (extraordinarily briefly) visit the Kirstenbosch botanical gardens. With only around an hour to visit, our walk in search of Fynbos was more of a rapid sprint of confusion. It didn't help that I was completely confused about which entrance we'd come in, so the map (which wasn't great to begin with) was totally useless. Our evening birthday celebrations in Tamboerskloof (close to the hotel) were significantly more successful. After a delicious fish dinner at the Miller's Thumb (well, fish for me, vegetables for Vijay), we visited a local hipster watering hole and met some super nice Capetonians.
The best outing was our trip to the winelands on Saturday with Jazmyne and Brett, who very generously spent the day taking us around. Although the weather did not give us a particularly auspicious start -- it was pouring on Saturday morning -- it turned out to be a fantastic day trip. We went on a wine tour and tasting in Stellenbosch and enjoyed a wonderful lunch with a gorgeous view in Franschhoek, a delightful town settled by the French Huegonauts in the late 17th Century. Finally, we ended the day back in Cape Town with sundowners by the water.
It's impossible not to notice the massive wealth disparity in the city. As nice and comfortable as many of the areas we visited were (as Jazmyne says, Cape Town is kind of "Africa light"), there are also many densely populated areas where people live in makeshift shacks and temporary housing structures. The local government is apparently attempting to provide more permanent housing in these areas, but progress is slow and (according to the airport transfer driver) often marked by corruption.
A couple other random items of note: Everywhere outside the center of the city, people stand at traffic intersections hawking flowers, fruit, and various other items to drivers going past. Also, anyone in the government who has the right connections is apparently entitled to have a motorcade, and such "blue light brigades" are a common cause of traffic. Finally, and most embarrassingly, I was confused about why Jay-Z was making political speeches in South Africa until my hiking tour guide explained that J.Z. is a nickname for Jacob Zuma, the South African President. Oops.
See more pictures here. Next up: Swakopmund, Namibia (where I am safe in my hotel as I write this).
Glad you are safe. Keep it up!
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