Day 2 - Cape Town - Table Rock and District Six Museum

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Today started early this morning at 5:00 a.m. with a slow 4-mile run with a few other teachers in the group. It got a little shady when our tour guide had us running along the side of a bridge, so running single file was necessary, and a little scary. Our small group of runners were all thankful when we reached a wide path that was free from fast-moving vehicles.

We got back to the hotel with plenty to time to eat breakfast, shower, and get ready for the day. First stop, Table Mountain, which happens to be one of the new 7 Wonders of the World. This huge mountain can’t be missed. It towers over the city of Cape Town and it’s hard to take your eyes off of this majestic beauty. We took a cable car way up to the top, and then we had close to two hours to explore. YES!!! I tried to see as much as I could, but I believe you would need days to see all of it. I also was on a mission to find a few geocaches. I have 10 World Travel Geocoins for the classrooms back at school. My hope is that each geocoin will be picked up and taken to all corners of the earth. We’ll see. It started off a tad-bit frustrating, since the coordinates said the first geocache was close by. I couldn’t find it, and with all the Muggles around, it made it difficult. Walking around and around the same bush made me look a little crazy. So I moved on and went to the next location. Again, I couldn’t find it at first. However, after several attempts, I finally walked down a new path and found it easy enough. So I placed two geocoins in this small geocache, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that these will be picked up and move around to other cities, or other countries, or other continents.

Now, my time was coming to a close, so I made my way back to the cable car. Once there, I made the most awesome discovery. Right on the side of the building was a Geocoin Hotel. The lock was accessible if you had the correct combination, which was easy to find on the app. Inside was a container for every continent, except Antarctica. I placed one coin to hopefully travel to Europe and the other to Australia... I hope. Since I have six more coins to place in a geocache, I’m going back tomorrow afternoon to place the other six coins in other containers. Literally, this is the best chance for these coins to travel the world. My time in South Africa will be over in a couple weeks; however, through these coins, this experience has the possibility to keep going much longer.

After lunch, we visited District Six Museum. The joy and excitement from this morning was pushed aside, because the atrocities that took place here, all in the name of apartheid, is a humbling reminder that mankind can be very cruel and heartless. District Six was founded in 1867 as a mixed community of freed slaves, merchants, artisans, laborers, and immigrants. Then in February, 1966, District Six was declared a white area. 60,000 residents were forcibly removed, and their homes and community were quickly bulldozed over. These hard-working people, with their families of all ages, were forced to move several miles away. However, there jobs were still within city limits, and I’m sure you can see the difficulty this would have created on so many levels. Is mankind capable of being cruel and heartless? This museum serves as a reminder to us all, and also challenges us to never allow these incredible injustices to happen again.

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Photos

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Rock Hyrax, locally known as the Dassie.

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Found my first geocache.

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Selfie and Shadow

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Geocache Geocoin Hotel

Comments

[Carol Surges]

Day Two
Sounds awesome Jeremy. Did you see a rock hyrax yourself?

[Jeremy810]

Hey Carol, Yes I saw them several times. They were really close to people and the trails, however our guides insisted that we make no attempts to touch them. They look cute, but I guess they can get quite aggressive.