South Africa - Cape Town

Before I tell you about our first day in Cape Town, I'm going to describe our last night there.

On our last night in Cape Town, I sat on a huge boulder on the beach. To my left, the sun was enjoying its last 15 minutes in the sky. To my right, a blanket of fog was rolling down over the Twelve Apostles like a table cloth floating down to cover a table. I felt relaxed. I don't often feel like that away from home on a doing vacation. I also had a weird sensation of feeling at home in a place on the other side of the world I'd only been in for three days. I felt deeply at peace, even though I knew we had to pack up and travel the next day. A lot of times when I talk about trips I focus on what we did and saw so I wanted to lead in with how I felt. Because this post is long and full of photos and that will get lost among the ruins of the trip.

Cape Town straight up blew me away. The seafood was amazing, the US dollar goes far when converted to the South African rand, the history is interesting, the scenery is dramatic and breathtaking, and the city has quite a laid back yet cosmopolitan feel to it.

We don't often do city vacations. Cape Town didn't feel big city-ish to me, but it is spread out. Like any other city, Cape Town has crime. I was comfortable walking around by myself during the day (not with a camera around my neck, but just like a regular person) but wouldn't do that at night. On our first day we did a half day overview tour. We started off at Table Mountain, accessible by cable car (about $13USD round trip). The flat-topped mountain has withstood six million years of erosion and in 2012 was named one of the New7 Wonders of the World after a global poll. The view from the top is wonderful and the mountain itself lords over the city and coastline, present in some viewpoint almost anywhere you go.

Video going down in the cable car. Turn your sound down because a child is losing her shit:

My favorite thing about this overview tour was learning about the history of Cape Town, which of course includes the relatively recent departure of apartheid. I'm not going to conduct a history lesson here, but as a result of apartheid black and colored people were pushed out of their homes and into townships, many with tin roofs and walls and no running water or electricity. You can see the townships on the outskirts of Cape Town. Seeing in passing how people were forced to live made me feel shame as a human being.  The government is now making reparations of sorts by building homes for families who were displaced beginning back in the 1960s. As an outsider, the country seems to have come pretty far in a very short amount of time, especially in how they see each other as people. America feels like it has a bigger race war. One of the oldest neighborhoods in Cape Town is Bo-Kaap, notable these days for its brightly colored homes. Many of the residents of the Bo-Kapp area are descendants of the slaves who were imported to the Cape of Good Hope by the Dutch during the 17th & 18th centuries. Bo-Kaap is also a largely Muslim community and has been since the late 1700s. I adore color and standing in this neighborhood made me happy. 

City Centre is where the biz goes down...we didn't spend much time there, but did see Parliament and City Hall where Nelson Mandela made his famous speech upon his release from prison in 1990, the WWII memorial, and St. George's Cathedral, from which Desmond Tutu, the first black archbishop in South Africa, led many marches calling for the end of apartheid. The cathedral is a strong symbol for democracy in South Africa.

We spent the afternoon at the V&A waterfront, beginning with lunch at Baia. The seafood in this town is absolutely outstanding. We wandered around the waterfront for a while, listening to some street music, and shopping at the Watershed, which is full of goods produced entirely in Africa. I hate when I buy souvenirs and they don't go back into the local economy.

We closed out our first day rambling around Sea Point. MFD hit the public pool, we wandered and collected shells on the beach and he napped and I read. All the music people came out with their guitars right before sundown. We watched the sunset and peaced out on the day, unable to travel far for dinner so we ended up eating a gross meal at the restaurant attached to the hotel. It reminded me of TGI Friday's, South Africa style. And with less flair. See the trees in the pics on the bottom? There are insane winds in Cape Town during the summer season so you see a lot of that. We experienced the winds on Friday and they are no joke.

Our third day was supposed to be shark cage diving. We got a cancellation notice the night before because the water has been too warm - no sharks had come to the boat in the past 21 days. We found ourselves with an open day, so we lingered over coffee and trolled the beach a bit. MFD got a haircut and a massage while I roamed around the promenade. And saw old men in the tide pool in underwear. LOL for days.

After a bit of dithering back and forth of what we should do, we headed down to Camps Bay, the little section of the city right next to where we were staying. It had great gobs of lively energy in its streets and on its beaches. MFD had carried his bathing suit in a backpack for two days and never used it. On the day he didn't have it, he wanted to hit the beach. So we found a shop and outfitted ourselves for the day. I was happy to get a beach bag made in Kenya and a towel/blanket with the blanket side made there too. We rented two chairs and an umbrella for about $6USD - anyone who rents umbrellas from a beach in NJ knows what a freaking steal that is. I could do without the people trying to sell me everything under the sun on the beach, and it is not a beach where you can just leave your bag and wander. We had an early dinner in an awesome little sidewalk restaurant, Tuscany Beach, with the best waiter ever - Gus.

The scenery is insane on this beach:

But the star of the day was seeing the fog come down over the mountains like a table cloth, sitting on huge boulders warm from the sun, and watching the sun dip into the sea while hearing the sounds of native Cape Towners all around us out enjoying their slice of heaven.

Hotel
Protea Hotel Sea Point, Arthurs Road, Cape Town
Nice rooms, a block from the promenade
Breakfast was included for us, and it was totally passable. The restaurant attached to the hotel and providing its room service sucked.

Booking this trip
This trip was the first escape I booked via Living Social. The airfare and hotels were set - I could choose the travel dates, but not the airline or time. I could have switched the hotels, but I let it ride.

When we arrived in Cape Town after 9:30 on Wednesday night after a long travel time that started with us leaving our house in Philadelphia at 10 a.m. on Tuesday morning, I realized that this was actually a tour group.

I like to plan my own vacations and I don't like to feel forced to be around people. I was filled with dread but then I realized that I would still be doing my own thing, like usual, with the exception of a half day tour of the city the next morning to get the lay of the land. And I felt better. The tour was through Gate 1 (which is actually headquartered outside of Philadelphia), and I have to say our tour guide was exceptional and it was REALLY nice to have someone take care of your bags and checking into your hotels for you. I can see how it would appeal to people traveling internationally. And the price was absolutely unbeatable for what was included. Like less than half of what it would have been if we booked it all on our own. I would actually book through them again if it was laid out like this trip, where most of the stuff was optional to do with the group. We were a small group of 21 traveling together and 15 of them were travel buddies who booked at least one trip through Gate 1 per year for the past 10 years when they saw a good deal. They had no complaints.

For our second day we hired a private driver, and I'll share those photos Friday. My brain is reeling from this post alone. If you got through it, I'm sure your brain is too. LOL