EXPLORING
Cape
Town - South Africa
by Jim Gladstone
We drive along some of the world’s
most spectacular coastal roadway, all curves and cliffs
and crashing surf below, occasionally slowing down to
observe roving families of Chacma Baboons, whose tiny
newborns cling to their mothers’ fuzzy underbellies
as their troop marches along. We make a full stop along
the shoreline of False Bay, agog at the utterly unexpected
sight of an ostrich, nonchalantly lolling on the beach.
“Don’t get too close,” says Colin, my driver
and guide, as I slip out of the town car and creep toward
the bird, pulled by the giddy gravity of a wild animal
in a natural environment, my digital camera in hand.
“You don’t want to feel that kick.” Fair
enough. Since a visit to Cape Town delivers an
exhilarating non-stop kick of its own.
After a few bird shots, Colin drives
another quick stretch and pulls over at the head of
one of the country’s most popular national park
trails. It’s an easy 15-minute hike, during which
I spot a quartet of white-masked, curvy-horned antelope
called Bontebok, grazing on a nearby hillside. Suddenly,
I realize I am on the frontier; standing on the rocky
promontory of the Cape of Good Hope, staring
toward the horizon, surrounded by endless sea.
I breathe in the ocean air and visualize
the planet: a true traveler, I am balanced on one of
the farthest reaching fingers of the globe. It’s
hard to resist throwing my arms wide, Winslet/DiCaprio-style
and hollering, “Tip of the world!”
The epic distance I have traveled to
reach the far-flung Cape—about 7,800 miles, and
five time zones, from New York City to Cape Town—contributes
to both the pleasure and challenge of such a trip.
One feels truly away on a voyage of
this magnitude, and, if you’re lucky, you’ll
find the impulse to check your email and text messages
magically dissolving as you put clouds and continents
behind you. That said, there is inevitably some jet
lag, but it’s undercut by the fact that Cape Town
itself—with its rugged hills, rolling fog, and
gorgeous beaches—is something of a dreamscape.
It lends itself well to a day or so of fuzzy meandering
before you click fully back to your senses.
The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront,
with its outdoor cafés, ethnic handicraft markets,
and lively busking scene—including plenty of traditional
African musicians and dancers—is a great place
to wander while you regain hold of your internal clock.
If you’re up to it, you can catch a quick, 20-minute
helicopter ride over the Cape, giving you an overview
of the ground you’ll attempt to cover during your
visit.
There is so much to experience in the
Cape region itself, let alone South Africa as a whole,
that I recommend that North American travelers plan
to spend at least ten full days on the ground to get
the best value from their long-haul air dollar.
With a minimum of 16 hours airport-to-airport
travel time (more likely 20, with typical transfers
in Johannesburg en route and a US-mandated security
check touchdown in Dakar, Senegal on the return journey),
as comfortable an in-flight experience as possible is
essential.
South African Airways (SAA),
which offers service from New York (JFK) and Washington,
D.C. (Dulles) is aces on this front, with 34” legroom,
amenity kits, and extensive on-demand entertainment
options even in Economy class. If you have deep pockets,
or a healthy stockpile of Star Alliance points, this
is one of those flights on which it’s worth upgrading.
SAA’s Premium Business Class offers 180-degree
lie-flat seats, voted most comfortable in the world,
cheerfully solicitous crew members who will gladly take
time to chat with you about their home country, snazzy
meal presentation, and free-flowing, high-end, South
African wines.
On the drive from Cape Town International
to the central city, my taxi passed several sprawling
townships, the dense, ghettoized communities of non-white
citizens that are the legacy of apartheid. Some of the
townships are shantytowns with teetering wooden shacks
and corrugated tin roofs, others are more modernized,
with modest concrete houses not much different in style
than what you might find in a blue-collar community
in an American industrial city. Though, the racial homogeneity
of these areas, and the social problems resulting from
the lack of opportunity for many of their residents,
is striking. There are separate townships of “blacks”
(citizens of largely African tribal descent) and for
“coloureds” (those whose ethnic backgrounds
reflect their country’s historical mixture of blacks,
Europeans, and Indians). While racial segregation is
no longer legal in South Africa, its remnants are ever-present,
and its economic impact continues to reverberate in
millions of lives.
While it’s easy for tourists from
around the world to visit the United States without
delving into our history of slavery and racial unrest,
the fact that government-enforced apartheid came to
an end just 16 years ago makes this long, unsettling
chapter in South Africa’s history harder for American
visitors to ignore.
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SLIDESHOW
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It's well worth noting that, in a country
still thought of by many as tainted by its poor human
rights history, rising tides carry all boats: the LGBT
community has been treated with great respect by the
post-apartheid government. In 1996, South Africa became
the first country in the world with constitutional prohibition
of discrimination based on sexual orientation. Since
2005, same-sex marriage has been legal in South Africa.
LGBT visitors with a strong sense of consciousness about human
rights will want to take a ferry out to Robben Island
and visit the District Six Museum where Nelson
Mandela’s fellow former-prisoners now share their
stories as tour guides.
Many Capetonians willingly open up to
visitors and speak about their personal experiences
under apartheid. Colin, the tour guide who escorted
me to the Cape of Good Hope, recalled a time when his
wife was disinvited from her corporate picnic because
it was being held on Robben Island which, in addition
to its public parks, held the penitentiary where anti-apartheid
activists were imprisoned. Because she had “coloured
blood” in her family history, her presence on the
island was viewed as a security risk.
Coffee Beans Routes, is one of
several grassroots local tour companies offering educational
excursions into the townships, with a portion of proceeds
benefitting needy members of the community. One evening
in Cape Town, I joined a Coffee Beans guide and two
other tourists for a nighttime visit to the township
of Gugulethu, visiting descendants of the Xhosa
tribe. We sat in their living rooms for casual musical
recitals, tales of life in a changing city, and the
chance to converse over a homemade dinner of stewed
chicken, local Hansa brand beers, and the cornmeal porridge
called pap, which, along with beans, is the region’s
staple food.
There’s actually less palpable
racial tension in Cape Town than one feels in parts
of large American cities today. There’s a general
sense of “good riddance” when locals of all
colors talk about apartheid; a sense of relief and pride
that South Africa has begun to reassert its presence
on the global stage.
There’s no greater symbol of this
reemergence than South Africa playing host to soccer’s
2010 World Cup beginning on June 11. While tens
of thousands of foreign football fans boost tourism
for the short run, extensive television coverage of
the matches in nine cities around the country, four
of which have built brand new stadiums for the Cup,
will make world travelers more aware than ever of South
Africa’s appeal.
If the World Cup is part of your inspiration
for a Cape Town trip, it would be hard to choose a better
home base than the luxurious, all-suite Cape Royale,
by far the most elegant accommodation in the ideally
located Green Point area (technically a suburb, but
at the heart of the Cape Town you’ll want to experience).
From the Cape Royale’s sexy rooftop lap pool and
bar area, you can gaze at the shimmering, ribbed structure
of the city’s new stadium, with seating for 70,000,
less than a half mile away. While the hotel’s lobby
has a rich ambience akin to a Four Seasons, the rooms
themselves have a luxurious urban loft aesthetic, including
impossibly huge bathrooms with separate showers and
tubs.
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