Cape Town Round-Up

April 30, 2010

Well less than a week into my trip and I’ve already procrastinated updating my blog. The good news is I was way too busy enjoying Cape Town and finally being able to sleep through the night to get on my computer.

Cape Town and the surrounding area are incredibly diverse. The city itself – the downtown area – is home to a handful of tall buildings but mostly smaller streets and squares. As a visitor I didn’t spend much time there because it seemed impossible to find anything I was looking for (from the guide book). Instead we found ourselves in a café drinking intense espresso and even more intense German liquor that tasted like liquorish, looked like motor oil and made me feel like I was tripping my face off.

The Waterfront is the main tourist area, which surrounds the docks and has lots of outdoor restaurants and shops. It’s a bit of a tourist trap really. It was fun for a beer on the deck in the sunshine, but the service there (and really in most places in Cape Town) was horrible, as was the fried fish I got. Everyone was raving about the food in Cape Town and I have to say I was very disappointed in it myself. Perhaps it’s because I don’t eat meat. The seafood is supposed to be some of the freshest you can get, but their preparation is just not to my liking. I kept trying but my fish was consistently too chewy or not cooked well enough. It could just be me I guess! By the end of the week we did find 2 great restaurants, both French :).

My favorite parts of the city were definitely the gardens and parks. While Cape Town is very cosmopolitan there are great little pockets of protected nature that were perfect for sitting in the sun and picnicking. My photos really will tell more about the gardens then I ever could put into words, but Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens is truly one of the nicest places I’ve ever been. They sell you a picnic in a bag and wine (all local and sustainable) and the views in every direction are to die for. It reminds me a lot of Marin County in California. You find yourself taking in deep breaths, smelling an amazing mixture of trees, plants and fresh, clean ocean-sprayed air.

The other outdoorsy wonder is Table Mountain National Park. It’s ridiculous!! The mountain itself is the backdrop to the city and massive. The National Park actually runs south to the very end of the Cape, ending at the Cape of Good Hope, the most southern point of Africa. It takes a little under an hour to drive to the southern point from Cape Town, curving cliff-side on the west side of the peninsula and coasting through little beach towns on the eastern side. There are a bunch of trails and we took one out of Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, which we expected to be about 2 hrs and moderate. We were useless and really didn’t plan well at all. In the end it took us 4 ½ hours and we hiked all the way up the mountain and across the top. Ten minutes into the hike I realized my cardiovascular health is pathetic and that climbing rocks and stairs and ladders were much harder than I would have expected (well, HAD I expected that… which I certainly didn’t). This continued the next hour and a half. It was the most strenuous hike I’ve ever done and at times I beat myself up so much for not having the energy I wanted. That could be due to our lack of eating breakfast or lunch and only bringing 2 liters of water. It was exhausting and exhilarating and something I will never forget. Once at the top the views were breathtaking, the air was immaculate and I was feeling a pride I haven’t felt in years. We treated ourselves to some cold cider and relaxed, basking in our accomplishment and the incredible views of the beaches and city below.

Driving south to Cape of Good Hope is spectacular. The further south you get the closer to nature you are, and the highlight of the whole trip was heading to The Boulders, a beach on the eastern side, and hanging out with the cutest freaking PENGUINS! They are not scared of people and hang out with you. You can even swim with them if you can bear the cold water. There are 3,000 living there and we probably saw a hundred. Their little waddles and hops are so cute we went back a second day to spend more time with them. We felt like we experienced something that very few people ever have the opportunity to and I am incredible grateful for that experience.
Heading south we encountered wild BABOONS. They were at first just at the side of the road – one at a time – but then one after one they spilled onto the street from the cliff above and we found ourselves in the middle of 15 baboons! They surrounded us and picked bugs off each other and climbed on one another and made me scream and bounce around the car like a child. They marked my second-best experience in S Africa. Hands Down.

Only an hour outside of the city is Stellenbosch, the wine region of South Africa. Over the past few years I’ve been hearing great things about S African wine and I was excited to add it to the global wine regions I’ve visited (California, Rioja Spain, New Zealand, Australia, San Emillion France…). It pains me to say this, but the wine flat-out sucked. The popular regional grapes are Chien Blanc and Pinotage. The wines are pretty sweet and just taste off. That said, $10 will get you the most expensive bottle in mid-range restaurants. The wine region was lovely though and strangely… Dutch. Nothing was in English and all the streets were in Dutch. I have nothing against the Dutch but I can tell a Mustenburg from a Freidenchlaz. Or whatever. In the end we did find a great Cabernet from Rustenburg vineyard so it is possible to find a good one out there, you really have to look though.

I loved Cape Town. I wished I had weeks more to explore it. There is a really difficult ‘other side’ to it, though, that made me really uncomfortable… the racial divide. Only 20 years ago Nelson Mandela was released and the blacks were able to be ‘equal’ and vote. Today the racial divide is still very obvious. On the coasts of the cape there are huge, modern, mulit-level stucco homes adorned with huge floor-to-ceiling windows and the newest and most immaculate architectural gems. I’m not saying only white people live in those homes, but I do think it’s mostly white. And outside of these cliff-side mansions are these Townships of 4-walled simple, tiny homes piled on top of each other where it appears many of the blacks/’workers’ live. Some companies host tours of the Township and I could never do that. How weird, to have the white tourists come through and see how you live in your poor township… I just found it wrong to even photograph it from afar. I did, but kept my photos very limited and only enough to show this without stripping the dignity from the community.

Cape Town, I learned, is the S Africa equivalent to the French Rivera. This helps me understand all the new construction and the increasingly high-class living in a place that is still at the bottom of the global cosmopolitan food-chain. My memories will always include the nature and mountains, the beaches and the Miami-like condos that adorn it, the dramatic modern architecture that is sprinkled amongst the hills overlooking the sea, and the ability to come into close contact with some of the most basic animals of the earth.