Cape Town

Cape Town!! We are now up to the beginning of April. As a group, we spent 5 days in Cape Town. I wish it were more. Cape Town is beautiful. It’s like an old European city. It is also an extremely white city. I can easily see why it is the most visited town in South Africa. To get to Cape Town we had a 10 hour bus ride that was boring and unproductive. As always, I meant to do homework but didn’t really get anything done but sleep. Sometimes I forgot I was in South Africa, the scenery was nothing but farms most of the way.

The morning after we go there (that would be April 1st I think) we went to the District Six museum. A little background on District Six. Before apartheid it was the most culturally diverse area in Cape Town, home to blacks, whites, coloreds, and Indians. They all lived peacefully together and nowhere else in the city did these cultures mix so harmoniously together. However, under apartheid this was unacceptable. District Six was located in a prime spot and the government forced everyone out. The non-whites were forced into townships several kilometres outside of the city centre where most of them worked. In District Six they had comfortable, solid housing. In the townships they were stuck in barrack like houses that leaked and creaked. For some the move was unbearable and we heard stories of elderly people dying from the stress and people committing suicide. Whites were also forced out but they got acceptable housing that compared to what they had in District Six. Basically, all of District Six was demolished. The government wanted to start from scratch. The site was rather large and still rather new. The architecture was amazing (that itself could have been a tourist attraction had the buildings survived). Much of the area is still bare today. We went to part of District Six where sidewalks lead to nowhere and bricks and cement litter the ground where houses, churches, and business once stood.

Directly after that we hiked up Table Mountain, at least those of us who wanted. Our director, Gary, really wasn’t thrilled by us hiking up. He described the hike as a four hour arduous hike, and we needed closed toed shoes, food, water, clothes for the top, and we got no time for a nap even though we needed it, and we would be hiking in the hottest part of the day. Well, it turned out to be not as bad as I was expecting. It was a 2 hour trek (this included a lot of water breaks), it was very sunny and hot but that wasn’t the worst part. The steepness of the trail nearly killed me. I thought I was in shape but this hike got the best of me. From the bottom I could not see how a trail could make it up the mountain. It did, and I made it up, somehow. The scene of Cape Town from the hike was amazing and even better from the top (which made the burning, cramping leg muscles worth it). Table Mountain seems to rise up from nowhere and Cape Town lies within the little flat land between the Atlantic Ocean and Table Mountain. Look up pictures and you get what I mean. It is absolutely breathtaking. I could have spent all day at the top of that mountain. That was definitely one of my favourite places I have been to so far.

That night was absolutely horrible. We went to a café that serves all African traditional food. I was ready to eat some great food but my legs weren’t. The entire night my legs were cramping up so bad I couldn’t sit down for more than 10 minutes without being in tremendous pain. I wish I could have enjoyed it more.

The next day was also a hiking day. I thought I was going to die. To my surprise I was not sore from climbing Table Mountain, just really tired. We went to Simon’s Town to Boulder Beach where the penguins live. They were so cute. Kind of sad, though, that there is a huge boardwalk over their nesting and playing grounds. After that we went to the Cape of Good Hope, the south-western most point in Africa. Talk about wind. I thought I was going to blow away. I had to walk to stand still. And the wind was cold because it was coming off the Atlantic Ocean, which is colder than the Indian Ocean. We were also warned about baboons stealing food here but we didn’t see any, at least I didn’t. Cape Point was next and the wind was just as bad there. We stayed there for a couple of hours and did some hiking. I hiked up to the lighthouse which was at the highest point on the Cape. And I thought the wind was bad by the Ocean. It was nothing compared to the lighthouse. The lighthouse and a wall acted as a wind tunnel and made for some entertaining times. I couldn’t hear anyone talking, I could barely keep my eyes open and any loose clothing would be gone in that wind. Cape Point is sort of a hook so at that vantage point if I looked to my left I could see the hazy blue mountains of the upper mainland and to my right would be Cape of Good Hope. I hiked some more after that, saw some eland, just enjoyed my time there.

The next day (this would be the 3rd) we went to parliament and saw where important government stuff happens. I’m not a huge fan of that so don’t ask questions, I wasn’t paying attention. The exciting part of that day was in the afternoon when we went to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was kept for 18 of his 27 years in prison. We had to read A Long Walk to Freedom and we knew about his life there. I was really excited but found the experience was semi-anti-climactic. Don’t get me wrong, it was extremely interesting and educational. I was just imagining something a little grander. Though it was a prison so I guess I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. The island is much larger than I thought and there are huge guns on the island and our tour guide was hilarious and he did quite well for having to give a tour to a bunch of Americans. On the tour bus we met a family that was in Cape Town for a wedding and they were from Chicago. Nice people.

That night was the first night of the Cape Town International Jazz Festival. It was great. I experienced every type of jazz music that night. I listened to your traditional jazz, then vocal jazz (The New York Voices), then I saw a techno-dance-jazz combo that was Goldfish. They have become quite a sensation in Langerry Flats recently, everyone has their music and have been playing it nonstop.

The next day wasn’t too exciting. I went to the South African Slave Museum and an art gallery. The museum was interesting but it got kind of long and the art gallery was just weird. I liked parts of it but a lot of it I just didn’t understand or thought was that great. I won’t even try to explain some of the pieces on display, they were just too weird.

That night was the second night of the jazz festival. My favourite band that night was 340ml. They were a rock band sort of jazz combo (it is really hard to describe some of this music, just look them up). I also saw the Kyle Eastwood Band, Maceo Parker, Rus Nerwich (I did not like him) and Mos Def. Hugh Masekela was the headliner and it was his 70th birthday so it was a huge deal. South Africa loves their Hugh.

That is the end of the Cape Town experience. When we got back to Port Elizabeth the Ironman competition was just finishing up so we cheered on the people that were still running. They either loved it or found us annoying. We started to talking to a guy from Pretoria who had just finished the race. We tried asking him how you prepare mentally for a 2 mile swim, 50 mile bike, and 26.2 mile run. He said you can’t you just do it. OK. People who do that are crazy.

Next up Lesotho!!

Peace.