Cape Town is a lovely city surrounded by mountains and the ocean. We explored all we could in our week in town and found there is really something for everyone here. We were fortunate to have 8 days of gorgeous weather and were able to do all the things we planned in our time here. While we are sad to leave, we have some pretty exciting sites to visit in the coming days and look forward to some game parks and nature treks and beach excursions.
Read on for highlights of our Cape Town adventures.
On our first full day (after the travel recovery day during which we simply walked around the city center and Greenmarket Square) we hiked up Lion’s Head, a 669-m peak that overlooks the city and the ocean and provides excellent views of the massive Table Mountain. At one point the hike splits and the adventurous climber can skip quite a bit of walking by pulling herself up using chains. Ginnie took the long way, but Anthony climbed right up! At the top, we rested to enjoy the views and eat our lunch above the city. After the climb, we walked back to the backpackers lodge through the quaint neighborhoods and stumbled upon a chocolate house where we promptly found a few treats.
Really high winds came in the next day, so we took that as our sign to spend the day walking through the historical sections of the city where we walked through the Company’s Garden, visited museums, and wandered through old Dutch areas. We returned to the Greenmarket Square to peruse the various stalls and get ideas for a piece of African art that will adorn our home eventually. The Company’s Gardens were grown when the Dutch East India Company designed a green space for both function and pleasure. It’s a nice long garden with lots of lush landscape and plants that have grown for 100’s of years. On the way into the garden we saw the former Parliament building, one of many examples of Cape Dutch architecture, as well as a large National Library and an old Dutch-style church. Further along we came to the Jewish museum and complex area where the Cape Town Holocaust Centre is housed. The exhibit was a moving testimony to the victims of the Holocaust and a reminder of how such an atrocity is bred from hatred and fear of difference. From there we continued our walk and came to the Castle of Good Hope, a large pentagonal fortress built by the Dutch East India Company and is the oldest surviving building in South Africa. We found our way to the District 6 Museum which chronicles the experience of the diverse peoples who lived in the District 6 neighborhood of Cape Town and were forced to move to segregated townships due to Apartheid. The museum shares the people’s stories in their words and pictures of the diverse community that was split up for forced segregation. Now, there is a land reclamation program in the works, however there are a lot of challenges due to the buildings put in place of former homes and the current residents/businesses not wanting to move.
a township of Cape Town; it's important to keep in mind there is still much to do to strengthen race relations and work to reduce poverty in the country
For the following day, we’d already reserved our tickets to visit Robben Island. After our tour, we stayed at the V&A (Victoria & Alfred) Waterfront where we enjoyed our lunch on a bench by the water and then wandered through the craft shops and visited Nobel Square where bronze statues of the four South African Nobel Prize winners stand with famous quotes written in the plaza. We also wandered into a big mall with two bookstores; a bookstore is always a treat when we are travelling since there are many places without good access to books and we get plenty of titles to add to our reading list (the list has grown so long that we feel we need a year just to devote to reading!!).
Our next day was Saturday the 9th and we were fortunate to awake to a cloudless, sunny, not-windy day which made it possible to climb Table Mountain. We were well prepared for a 3-hour uphill, steep, rocky, in-the-direct-sun hike based on comments from fellow travelers and the lengthy safety review by Wayne (the manager of the lodge). We were both looking forward to the climb for days (weeks, really, after we’d spoken with Mrs. Rudolph – she teaches with Mrs. Tarzia and is South African) and had our water, snacks, sunblock, and ginnie’s hat ready by 9am. We were so glad to climb on a Saturday as there were many other climbers, most of whom shared our pace of climbing and stopping and climbing again. We also happened to climb on the same day as an HIV/AIDS Charity Climb was occurring. This was for brave souls who committed to climb up and down as many times as they could during the park’s hours; we heard a man set a goal for 11 round trips. This is a climb that is up a steep, rock-faced mountain that is in direct sunlight all day – these folks are impressive! I hope he achieved his goal. We also learned from another climber that the record for going up is 29 minutes and for coming down is 12 minutes! There were a couple dogs climbing as well, and one small pitbull mix was running up that mountain – he passed us early on; we talked to his owner and he told us the dog uses 3.5L of water each way (some of it is for dousing on the dog to cool him), pretty impressive little guy. He was all muscle, but with short legs there were still a few steps he couldn’t manage on his own. The climb was amazing and we finished in 2 hours – apparently all this hiking for the past three months provided some extra stamina, or perhaps it was simply the camaraderie of chatting with fellow climbers and keeping a steady pace to keep with the flow. At the top there were many cheers from our peers as we all reveled in reaching our goal. We spent another couple hours walking around the top to enjoy the views of Cape Town, which were vast and stunning. We ate our sandwiches and indulged in a refreshing ice cold Coke (it’s not always the case we can get a cold Coke on these travels, so it’s been nice here in SA to find them everywhere!). While we could have climbed back down, the steep steps would be really rough on the knees and we aren’t spring chickens anymore, so we took the cable car down. That was a quick ride then we walked back through town to return to the lodge, with a stop for ice cream on the way back – it was a hot day, we needed it!
After recovering from the walk, we spent Anthony’s birthday traveling along the Cape Peninsula – separate post to follow. There is also a separate post on our next day during which we toured the Winelands. On our last full day in Cape Town, we returned to the waterfront to walk to the World Cup Stadium and enjoy more time at the craft markets and shops along the seaside. Our return took us back through Greenmarket Square where we purchased a beautiful batik. At this rate, we are going to need a lot of wall space in our home because we just keep finding great pieces to frame (and we started doing this in our travels years ago, so the collection is really growing!). Batiks are painted fabrics that are then baked and covered in candle wax to set them. They are quite beautiful and we are fond of the one we found after several stalls. We have loved the African merchants, they have a great upbeat attitude and all joke around with us as we visit them, no high-pressure business like in some other world markets we have passed. Although, the laid back joking and comments are some pretty persuasive dealings… We met people from many parts of Africa who come to South Africa where they find a better opportunity to make money. It was hard to not buy from some of them.
We have fallen in love with Cape Town and feel certain we will return!
Ukuthula na-uthando!
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