Cape Town Gazette

---

I have had a wonderful week in Cape Town. It was great just to chill out in a comfortable hotel for a few days without having to pitch a tent every day. I stayed at Parliament Hotel in the City Bowl. The hotel was very comfortable, reasonably priced and the staff extremely helpful and friendly.

I arrived on a Saturday at lunch time just as everything in Cape Town shuts down for the weekend. The city is like a ghost town at this time and it was a bit eerie particularly as the wind was howling and it was quite cold. But it was a good excuse to do little as I needed the time to chill out, watch TV and write my travel blog.

By Tuesday I was ready to explore again so took the tourist bus to Kirstenbosch gardens and Houts Bay. The gardens were beautiful, nestled on the slopes of Table Mountain. They are a good introduction to the fynbos - a floral kingdom that is only found on the Cape. The protea flowers are particularly beautiful. The tour then went on to Houts Bay, where I jumped off for a tour around a small township that is being improved through a charity run by an Irish builder. Volunteers come over from Ireland to help build homes to replace the tin huts in the townships. There was a team of about 150 builders there when I visited. The charity has already finished about 350 homes with running water and electricity. This was my first real glimpse of some of the problems that had been generated by the aparteid regime.

Chris joined me on Tuesday and the storms and gales died down so the next day we took the cable car to the top of Table Mountain. The views are absolutely magnificent and we could have idled the day up there. However we took a cab to the V&A Waterfront - a huge area of shops and restaurants with a really continental atmosphere. It felt more like Europe than Africa.

The weather continued sunny. We took the opportunity to catch the ferry out to Robben Island. But first we visited the District 6 museum that shows the impact of relocating non-whites from there homes and demolishing a whole district of Cape Town in 1966 during aparteid. It was very moving. Robben Island has for centuries been a prison for political prisonners but came to the news as the gaol where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years of his imprisonment. A young 19 year old guide firstly took us on a very passionate tour round the island. An ex-political prisoner from a women's gaol on the mainland then conducted the tour of the high security wing. The whole experience was very moving as the struggle for equality was described and the way the prisonners turned there gaol into an education centre. Many prisoners and wardens attained degrees or better education while there.

Chris and I also hired a car for a couple of days. One day we drove around the Cape Peninsula. Beautiful scenery and a stiff climb to the lighthouse above Cape Point. The road back via Houts Bay is very dramatic as it has been carved out from the cliff face and there are danger signs every 100m. At one point the road goes under a carved out hanging cliff.

We went another day to Hermanus where I went out on a boat to dive with sharks but just spent two hours being seasick instead as it was too rough to dive! I saw Great white sharks though.

We also hired a cab for a day so that Chris could experience a wine tour of the Stellenbosch region. Our driver had picked me up from the drop off point of my overland tour and had offered the cab for a day at very reasonable rates. So we were not deterred by the bits falling off his very old VW and set off. He first took us to the Bergkeller - a huge underground area where red wines are matured and where the guide also taught us the finer points of wine tasting. Our driver had quite a strong Africaans accent though so was at times difficult to understand. Three wineries later and a day trying to understand our guide, we returned contentedly to our hotel.

It was sad for me when Chris left for the airport but tomorrow I fly to the Kruger to train to be a safari guide.

---

Photos

Table Mountain
Chris on the boat to Robben Island. Table Mountain in the background.

bottles
Our favourite passtime in Cape Town

Kirstenbosch
Kirstenbosch Gardens and Devil's Peak

windswept
The windswept look at Cape Point