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Published: September 2nd 2023
Me
Cape of Good HopeDear All
Amazing! I can't quite believe I'm here! South Africa has often seemed to be such a dark and forboding place given its recent troubles, yet at the same time wondrous and stunning. I'm so excited to explore, and so glad to have made this first step in simply coming here, after hearing so many not-so-good stories.
Both my flights here were good - I took Lufthansa with a connection in Frankfurt, as at the time of booking it was cheaper than the only direct flight from the UK with British Airways. The first flight was a short one from Heathrow to Frankfurt, filled with not one but two large school groups. I always seem to end up with school groups on my planes! One group had around 120 young teenage brats from Spain, and another had around 50 more respectful older teenagers from England. The latter, my heart sank when I learned, were also continuing on my flight to Cape Town... What is it with me and these darned large school groups! Fortunately there were so many on my first flight that I got bumped up to Business Class, which was brilliant! It was only an hour
to Frankfurt, but in Business Class the middle seats were left vacant, we were served drinks, refreshments and a delicious light meal, and I got talking to one of the English teachers accompanying their kids - it turns out that they were on a rugby and netball tour around Cape Town, as were so many other schools from the UK and South Africa as I learned on arrival in the city.
The second flight was a longer 11-hour stint, and I found out that one of the rugby brats was sat in my seat. Fortunately he moved straight away when I asked him, and I wangled a seat change where I ended up sitting next to a friendly South African guy I got talking to while boarding, rather than the rugby brat's friend, and still had my window seat on a double-seater rather than triple. Unfortunately the lovely German lady behind me was rude and kept banging my seat back, and after speaking politely with her twice about it, I called for a flight attendant to speak to her. She ended up swapping seats with her friend next to her, and it was all pretty smooth from there. I
slept a record 5.5 hours, half the flight - perfect! I watched "Avatar: Way of Water", but wasn't too into it as I was so tired. Two hours before landing, I glimpsed Namibia's spectacular Skeleton Coast and Kalahari Desert out the window - I do love looking out of plane windows!
Passport control, customs and luggage was all a breeze, and the passport control official in particular was very friendly and welcoming - note that US border officials! However, taxi touts were aplenty, and I ended up booking an Uber to my accommodation for an excellent and trustworthy price, which I think I'll do more than once on this trip. I was fortunate that I had arrived a couple of weeks before a taxi "strike" in Cape Town, which effectively wasn't a strike but riotous violence which saw minibus and taxi drivers, angry at increasing government measures to improve transport safety in the country, blockading roads, burning cars and attacking people - four people were killed, including a 40-year old British man, which drove the potentially volatile safety situation in South Africa a bit too close to home for me, poor man...
I checked into a clean, comfortable
Me
Robben Island and spartan Scalabrini monastic accommodation in the centre of Cape Town, with an awesome view of Lion's Head Mountain and a partial view of Table Mountain itself! The Scalabrini Fathers are a missionary organisation who help refugees in Cape Town, and rent out a few rooms to travellers like me, alongside their refugee clients - it was more comfortable than it sounds, and my accommodation included a very well-equipped shared kitchen. After a quick rest, cup-of-tea, and freshen up, I explored Cape Town city centre.
Cape Town's CBD felt at once friendly and sketchy, enticing and foreboding. The urban landscape features modern, developed streets and skyscrapers that felt European, with a decidedly African flavour underneath. The place was awash with friendly and smiling faces, interspersed with straggly and skinny hustlers. I felt it was a place not off-limits, but one to still keep your wits about you I think. If anyone feels offended by my next comment, feel free to challenge your own pre-assumptions as I did, or read another travel blog - something that felt instantly noticeable to me during my time in Cape Town, and later other parts of the country, was the number of white beggars
The Namibian Coast
Lufthansa Flight to Cape Town on the street, along with black beggars. This definitely became something for me to ponder and chew on while delving into this really very fascinating melting pot of a country in its post-Apartheid days, as well as the presence of working-class white South Africans which I also didn't expect. My walk around was mainly to get a feel for the place, and South Africa as a whole, and included a slap-up burger and fries lunch at Steers, a South African fast food place I first encountered 20 years ago in Uganda which at the time was a real blessing after weeks of non-Western East African food. Ever since, I have dreamed of eating at Steers, and having its delicious Seasoning Salt on my fries again, and I think I'll be having a few Steers meals while here. I then stocked up on supplies at a local supermarket. The weather on my first day was drizzly, grey, cloudy and foggy, with no sign of Table Mountain. However, at a magical moment later in the afternoon, the weather cleared with sun and blue sky, and there it was - Table Mountain in all its glory, seemingly appearing out of nowhere! It was
just stunning to see in the background of the gritty urban centre, with similarly iconic Lion's Head Mountain just next to it.
I just had time to visit Cape Town's Castle of Good Hope, and was let in for free as there was only half-an-hour until closing, which actually felt like plenty there. The Castle of Good Hope is South Africa's oldest building, and was built in the late 17th century during the Dutch East India Company's use of the Cape area as a stocking-up point on their way to Indonesia, and thus felt a good place to begin my understanding of recent South African history - such a troubled and complex time, bringing together so many people from around the world into the rather chaotic creation of the modern South African nation, combining European, African, Indian and South-East Asian people into the notably exotic mix that exists today.
That evening I had a takeaway dinner from a local vegan joint (not for one moment that I'm thinking of ever giving up meat, but it was nice, friendly and near to my accommodation), and with a cheap bottle of local South African wine (£2.50, worth at least £8
back home I reckon), called it an evening (the bottle of wine would last me my whole four nights in Cape Town by the way, not just this one!). I had a really amazing first day in South Africa, and slept so well on my first night with no jet lag to contend with.
The next day I took a full day tour with the famous Baz Bus. This was one of the ways to do South Africa on a budget - a shared minibus that regularly plied two routes, from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth, and then from Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg, dropping off and picking up travellers at accommodations along the way. I had been planning to do it from Cape Town to Johannesburg when I'd originally planned this trip back in 2020, but since then the business has suffered and is currently only doing the Cape Town to Port Elizabeth section, which led me on this trip to hiring a car for the route instead.
In addition to this minibus run, the Baz Bus also does this Cape Town-based day trip of the Cape Peninsula. The driver was called Safwan and was very energetic and
friendly. After I met him at the Baz Bus's central headquarters in the CBD, we picked up three more tourists at a local backpackers den, and headed off. Our first stop was Camps Bay at the foot of Table Mountain's stunning Twelve Apostles cliffs, a seriously upmarket residential area with good coffee, friendly locals and a stunner of a beach. After this we headed to Houts Bay for a seriously bumpy boat trip to nearby Duiker Island's cape fur seal colony. The seals were nice, but the boat trip was far more exciting, with huge waves which can reach up to nine metres at times and is a world-famous tube-riding surf-spot, but fortunately on this day the waves were comparatively more genteel. Despite this, there were quite a few people throwing up on the journey though, and I thanked my lucky stars that I'm not a seasickness sufferer.
Next we had a drive up and over Chapman's Peak with awesome views back towards Houts Bay, and then onto Boulders Beach and its adorable penguin colony, home to a community of tiny African penguins, native only to South Africa and Namibia. The local Cape Nature Conservation organisation brought this species
Steers!
Cape Town CBD back from the brink of extinction with only two breeding pairs in the 1960s, to 3000 of the little darlings today. There is a boardwalk for tourists to walk right through and above their colony, and the penguins seemed completely oblivious to the comings and goings of their camera-wielding observers like myself.
Then we headed into the Cape Point National Park, for a hike up to Cape Point first with stunning coastline views all around, and then along to the Cape of Good Hope itself, Africa's most south-westerly point, and due to the treacherous waters and currents of the area, the resting place of countless shipwrecks over the centuries. It was originally named much more closely to its nature as "Cape of Storms" in 1488 by Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias, but was re-named a few years later as "Cape of Good Hope" by Portuguese King John II to give a more positive feel to this treacherous area, as it represented, until the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869, the only sea-route between Europe and Asia.
Our driver made for us a delicious picnic lunch at the Cape Point Nature Reserve rangers' station, with a few ostriches roaming
Steers!
Cape Town CBD around nearby, before we headed off onto our final stop for the day, the Cape Point Ostrich Farm. I chose to feed the ostriches there, and was told by Safwan to hold my plate up and back into the lovely creatures. There were three interested avians as we approached - as I backed into them, one took away the plate on its first bite, while another bit my finger, aiming for the plate which had just been bitten away. I uploaded a hilarious video of this onto my Facebook page if anyone's interested in seeing it - it really is a funny watch, and made me cry with laughter! We then headed back to Cape Town for the end of this amazing tour, which I highly recommend to anyone.
For my second full day in Cape Town, I bought a day pass for the Cape Town City Sightseeing bus tour. It has two routes, and I took both of them, stopping off at one stop on each. I also just enjoyed sitting on the top deck of the bus watching the Capetonian world go by, and listening to the excellent and very positive commentary, which along with Johannesburg's City
Cape Town
Cape Town CBD Sightseeing tour later in my journey, displayed great pride and hope for the present and future of the country. My first stop was the Aerial Cableway up to Table Mountain, where I decided to fork out double the ticket cost to get a fast track pass, beating the infamously long queue which had already reached 1.5 hours by the time I got there at 10am! The Cableway had been closed most of the morning until then due to high winds, so I imagine this was perhaps the backlog of people who had been patiently waiting for it to open. Instead of 1.5 hours, the queue took me just 10 minutes, although I did feel marginally guilty pushing ahead of those who had been waiting for so long.
Table Mountain is perhaps Cape Town's, and South Africa's, most iconic sight, and I was excited to be there. It forms the top three tourist destinations in the country, along with Robben Island and Kruger National Park, and its two-mile long plateau stands at just over one kilometre above the city below. To my mind, any city that has both spectacular mountains and sits next to the sea is a beauty, and
View from My Accommodation
Lion's Head Mountain, Cape Town Cape Town ranks up there with Rio de Janeiro and Barcelona as fulfilling these criteria and thus being some of the most beautiful cities in the world.
It was just freezing and very windy at the top, but I still managed a face-numbing tour of the circular path up there that goes along the top of the table. There were simply breath-taking views all around, over Cape Town below, and onto the Cape Peninsula stretching towards the southern horizon which I'd explored the day before. It was a really worthwhile visit, if I was able to block out the cold.
After my visit, I hopped on the bus back to town again to take the second route, via the swish and swanky resorts of Clifton, Sea Point and Green Point on Cape Town's western coast, hangouts apparently for famous people including Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith and Charlize Theron.
My main aim for the second route was to do a wine tour at the Groot Constantia Estate, South Africa's oldest, but I actually changed my mind at the last minute as I'd also planned to visit a wine estate later in my trip near Stellenbosch, and instead enjoyed
a wonderful afternoon at the world-famous Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden. These gardens were created in 1913 by British-born South African botanist Henry Harold Pearson, who sought to preserve the highly specialised and unique flora of the Cape region, right there on the slopes under Table Mountain itself, and with far-reaching views the other way towards the fantastically-named Hottentots Holland Mountains in the distance. I was fascinated to learn that the Cape floral environment of South Africa forms one of the world's six floral kingdoms, and thus sits alongside the Holarctic, Paleotropical, Neotropical, Australian and Antarctic kingdoms, albeit tiny in comparison to each of the others. The plant species preserved in the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens are thus highly specialised and unique, and world-famous among botanists - it was a real pleasure to visit!
My arrival coincided with a twice-daily free guided tour leaving at 2pm, and I took it as it just felt right - I enjoyed it so much! The next two hours were filled with learning about the tiny Cape floral kingdom, and was led by a lovely lady called Carol, with only four of us including myself, an Argentinian lady living in Cape Town, and an
American mother-son travelling duo. It was a beautiful place with an incredible setting, and it was a fascinating tour - I particularly liked walking along the tree canopy walkway called the Boomslang Canopy Trail. I then took the bus back to town again, taking the western coastal resort route once more, followed by a walk through Cape Town's fantastic V&A Waterfront at sunset, which I planned to explore properly the next day, with a takeaway Nando's for dinner and more South African wine flowing.
On my final day in Cape Town, I was up early for a tour to Robben Island, but still slept enough as I went to sleep around 8pm due to "loadshedding", something I was just going to have to get used to on this trip I thought. Loadshedding refers to enforced power cuts at certain times throughout the country as simply not enough electricity is being produced at the moment in South Africa. Everyone I spoke to blamed this on political corruption, and understandably riles at it - it's been going on for five years now, and I just can't believe that Africa's most developed country still continues with this. With no lights on this
evening at 8pm, I thought I might as well go to sleep as there wasn't much else to do in the dark, lol!
Robben Island was very enjoyable and educational, and is where Nelson Mandela was infamously imprisoned for 18 of his 27 years of incarceration. Mandela has been one of my heroes in life through his teachings of forgiveness and reconciliation. Without him and his vision of a "Rainbow Nation", South Africa would have very likely gone to civil war which would have been atrocious for all and the country. I see him, along with many others, as an amazing man to have been able to quell such an explosive situation with so much violence in the country growing during the 1980s as I was growing up. Equally important to my mind, although very much an unsung hero internationally, is his presidential predecessor and last president of Apartheid South Africa, FW de Klerk, who engineered the transition to democracy in the country and the handing over of the reins to Mandela. He apparently felt God calling him to save South Africa in such a way, and was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize alongside Mandela at the same
time. Sadly not many people know his story, but I do, and I was proud to have my photo taken next to a de Klerk statue back at the V&A Waterfront.
Anyway, back to Robben Island. The tour included a boat trip out nine miles to the tiny offshore island, a bus tour of the island by a former mainland political prisoner, prison tour by a former Robben Island prisoner, and a look inside Mandela's 2m x 2.2m cell, his home for 18 years on the island. Apparently, among other things, Henley's Invictus poem kept him sane - "I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul", and I highly recommend the films "Invictus" and "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom" to learn about the incredible man's story, both before and after 1994. No matter how little freedom he had, this quote tells me that he still had charge of his own self, and has been an inspiration to me in my life too.
While on the tour, I met the Commissioning Editor of my second favourite travel guide, the Bradt series. She actually invited me to update one of their guides over a future summer
holiday, and gave me her card. I spent a great deal of my South African adventure pondering this amazing offer, and have since been in touch on my return to the UK - we shall see if anything comes out of this!
Back on the mainland, I had the most delicious steak and chips for lunch at a lovely harbourside restaurant in the beautiful V&A Waterfront district of town, a meal that would be repeated throughout my time in the country as I've never had such cheap and delicious steak - around £6 a time! The V&A Waterfront is such a modern, gentrified and buzzing area. Beyond the grit and grime of the CBD, Cape Town very much feels like a European city, and certainly the most developed and modern city in Africa I've been to thus far. Created in 1988 as a mixed-use area of retail, tourism and residential development, surrounding a fully-functioning harbour, the V&A Waterfront is 23 hectares in size and welcomes 24 million visitors a year - myself on this day being one of them!
My final stop for the day was the District Six Museum, not far from my accommodation, which tells the
story of the forced removal of a coloured community during Apartheid, and their relocation to the Cape Flats townships. The term "coloured" is considered offensive where I come from, but in South Africa it refers to a fascinating racial group who are descended from a mix of European, African and Malay backgrounds. Apparently, genetically, they are the most diverse peoples in the world, and I find their story fascinating. They mostly speak Afrikaans, which also surprised me as I thought this was the language of the Dutch-descended white people of South Africa. I learned that many coloured people chose to speak Afrikaans over English as this enabled them to be treated better during the Apartheid system. I had been learning some Afrikaans before my trip - it's a harsh-sounding language descended from the Cape Dutch people, and whilst understood by the Dutch, it doesn't apparently work so well the other way as its grammar system is much simpler and they have imported words from Malay. Today, South Africa's coloured population live mostly there in the Western Cape, and as mentioned I found it very interesting to learn about this unique people.
I had a comparatively early return to my
accommodation, for a bit of rest and contemplation on my time in Cape Town and my amazing start to my South African adventures. When I first arrived the place felt part-sketchy part-friendly, but upon leaving I found it more the latter. I was beginning to feel, confirmed throughout the rest of my journey, that the South Africa of reality is so far-removed from the South Africa of the media, that the latter seems to be bordering on the libellous. As I've seen many times in my travels worldwide, what you see on the ground differs so much from the exaggerations of the journalists who focus single-mindedly on the negativities of the world. What I had thus far found was an incredibly diverse and comfortable country, and far friendlier people and faces than I've seen for a long time back home in the snooty, self-obsessed west. I'm so looking forward to exploring more of this amazing country - Cape Town has been an amazing introduction, but now is the time to explore some more!
Until the next time, thanks for reading, and all the best for now 😊
Alex
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Captivating Cape Town
I've been waiting for these blogs to start! I may need to go back to Cape Town to visit the botanical gardens. Our trip to Robben Island got cx due to rough seas. We experienced scheduled power outages when we were in Kathmandu. It makes you wonder. We enjoyed the Sixth District Museum and the penguins. Your blog brings pleasant memories and we are eager to read more about your South African adventure.