Blogs from Boulders Beach, Western Cape, South Africa, Africa

Our remaining time in Cape Town is spent enjoying the views from Signal Hill, strolling around town and visiting the District Six Museum. As a town planner, urban renewal is a familiar subject, but the forced relocation of a multi-cultural community in Cape Town’s central area (known as District Six) during the apartheid era is something altogether more important. Formerly a neighbourhood occupied by a poor and diverse but culturally rich community, District Six was requisitioned for habitation by whites. The residents were forced to move, sometimes with no advance warning, and their houses and shops were demolished. Despite this mass clearance, few buildings were built in their place, aside from the ugly and sprawling Technikon, which remains once of the only buildings amid the district’s empty streets. Work is now underway to repopulate District Six, ... read more

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Zane and the Penguins He sidled up to us as we peered through the wire netting at a couple of sleepy-eyed “Jackass” penguins, more properly known as African Penguins. Their nickname is evidenced by the wild honking and braying that erupts from time to time as the next team arrives home from a day’s fishing and each male attempts to shack up with the wrong missus. Just as he opened his mouth to tell us about the penguins, a canon fired from a naval vessel docked a short ways north at Simonstown, its boom echoing around the mountains. Zane and a couple of fluffy penguins, swished under their mum, winced and took a moment to recover. When Zane did recover, though, the torrent of information that poured from him, punctuated only by the repeated boom ... read more