December 18, 2008; Cape Town, South Africa — On December 11th I flew from Nairobi to Cape Town to spend a week visiting friends and to see a bit of South Africa. For years I have studied the history and cultures of South Africa and have always had a desire to visit that country. While walking the Camino de Santiago two and half years earlier I met two fellow pilgrims, Rev and Merv, who live outside of Cape Town and they invited me to visit if I was ever in the area. Since I had two weeks free at the end of the program and was already in Africa, this seemed to be the best opportunity to make the journey to South Africa. The flight from Nairobi to Cape Town connected in Johannesburg but I did not leave the airport. Johannesburg has a very bad reputation for violence and thus traveling in many areas of that city—even in daylight—is not recommended. In any event, my layover was too brief to allow me to venture out into town and instead I had lunch in one of the restaurants inside the terminal.
Once I arrived in Cape Town I had a few days to explore the city before meeting up with my friends. Cape Town has been described many international travelers as among their favorite places in the world to visit and it is not difficult to see why. The city is situated on Table Bay facing northward with the neighborhoods of Sea Point, Clifton, and Camps Bay stretching westward along the Atlantic coast. The center of town is called the City Bowl because it is surrounded on three sides by mountains. The most prominent feature of the city is Table Mountain which towers over everything else. The first European settlement was located just north of the mountain but over the centuries, as Cape Town grew, the city and suburban neighborhoods expanded to surround the peak. It is indeed a strange sight to have mountain in the middle of town. Wherever one goes it always looms above, dominating every other structure. The tallest high-rise buildings are a fraction of the mountain’s height. The town itself reminded me a bit of San Diego and has the feel of the Mediterranean or Southern California rather than the Africa with which I have become familiar. In fact, of all the foreign places that I have visited, this is the one that most resembles the United States (with the possible exception of Canada).
For the first two days I stayed in very pleasant B&B in Green Point near the Victoria & Albert Waterfront and spent most of that time walking around town. I managed to see the old Dutch fort and military museum, City Hall where Nelson Mandela gave his first public appearance after being freed from prison, the Company Gardens, the Bo Kaap Muslim neighborhood, and the District Six museum memorializing the forced eviction in the 1960s of the area’s non-white residents to the Cape Flats resettlement area further inland during the height of apartheid.
After two days I met Rev and Merv and stayed with them for the remainder of the week in Villiersdorp, about an hour inland from Cape Town. Villiersdorp is a farming community nestled in the mountains of the Western Cape. The area is stunningly beautiful and produces some the best wines in the world. We visited the town of Franschhoek (“French corner”) settled by Huguenots in the late 17th century and considered by many to be the gastronomic capital of South Africa. After a day visiting the Huguenot memorial we had dinner at an excellent French restaurant and returned to Villiersdorp.
One of the highlights of my visit to South Africa was the opportunity to go cage diving. The best place to do this is in Gansbaai which is about two hours south of Cape Town. The beaches and waters are teeming with seals and the dense seal population has resulted in some of the highest concentrations of great white sharks anywhere in the world. After a brief training session our dive boat headed out from the quay until we were a few miles out. As the crew dropped the cage over the side and baited the water the divers got suited up and waited for the sharks to show up. Each of us took our turn in the cage and were able to see the sharks up close underwater (though not as well as if we had done this in the winter months when the visibility is better). The sharks were truly amazing: graceful, powerful, and silent. They were not nearly as ferocious as they are made out to be in the popular imagination and, for the most part, they seemed more curious and cautious of us than we were of them. The cage dive was at once thrilling, frightening, and humbling. I’m glad that I finally had the chance to experience it.
The main disappointment of my trip to South Africa was that I did not have the chance to see more of the country. I never did get to KwaZulu Natal or to Pretoria. I also missed seeing Robben Island, the prison colony off the coast of Cape Town that housed Mandela and other political prisoners and which is now a heritage site. I had planned to go there on my final day, but the ferry service was cancelled because of rough seas. Oh well, something to save for the next trip. Since I missed out on Robben Island I was glad that at least earlier I had the chance to see the District Six museum. It has been less than two decades since the end of apartheid in South Africa and while the imbalance in political power in the country has largely been eradicated, the economic divisions have not. The country’s robust and diversified economy has lured many migrants from other parts of the continent and brought with it the resulting problems of unemployment and low wages.
The biggest concern among the South Africans I spoke to is violent crime, which is endemic and has risen to alarming levels (although Cape Town is much safer than Johannesburg or Durban). I never experienced any trouble, but I did feel all around me the anxiety and tension related to crime. The ubiquitous presence of razor wire, CCTV cameras, armed guards in even the best neighborhoods, and the warnings not to go out at night served as constant reminders of the risk lurking beneath the pleasant and tranquil atmosphere that I experienced most of the time. Again, the comparisons to the US were stark and unsettling. Despite all this, I found most South Africans optimistic about the future and extremely proud of the changes that their country has made in recent years and how they have transitioned from being governed by one the most odious regimes in the world into a functioning—if imperfect—democracy. South Africa is definitely a country that will require repeat visits to fully appreciate.
So it ends. I am finishing this last entry on my laptop in the Cape Town airport to be posted later. My flight to Nairobi departs in ninety minutes and I will be back in Riruta later this evening. In two days I return to London and then two days after that to New Jersey just in time for Christmas. I’ve been in Africa for nearly four months but it seems like just yesterday that I arrived. At the same time, the richness and variety of my experiences in this part of the world in some ways makes the time seem much longer. I have yet to appreciate fully how my journey in Africa has affected me, but I know that there are few parts of the world in which I have lived where I have developed such a strong sense of feeling at home. The easy-going warmth, genuine friendliness, and unassuming companionship of Africans are gifts that I will never forget and probably never fully appreciate. Evolutionary biologists have long since traced the origins of the first humans to the Great Rift Valley, so perhaps one can argue that any human being who travels to East Africa is experiencing a homecoming of the deepest kind. Maybe that is why the Africans I met often treated me like a long lost relative—on some level I suppose I was. Maybe that is also why I still cannot figure out if my departure from Nairobi in two days will constitute a return home or the leaving of it. T.S. Eliot wrote that “the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and to know that place for the first time.” We’ll see if he is right.
View southward of Cape Town and Table Mountain
Once I arrived in Cape Town I had a few days to explore the city before meeting up with my friends. Cape Town has been described many international travelers as among their favorite places in the world to visit and it is not difficult to see why. The city is situated on Table Bay facing northward with the neighborhoods of Sea Point, Clifton, and Camps Bay stretching westward along the Atlantic coast. The center of town is called the City Bowl because it is surrounded on three sides by mountains. The most prominent feature of the city is Table Mountain which towers over everything else. The first European settlement was located just north of the mountain but over the centuries, as Cape Town grew, the city and suburban neighborhoods expanded to surround the peak. It is indeed a strange sight to have mountain in the middle of town. Wherever one goes it always looms above, dominating every other structure. The tallest high-rise buildings are a fraction of the mountain’s height. The town itself reminded me a bit of San Diego and has the feel of the Mediterranean or Southern California rather than the Africa with which I have become familiar. In fact, of all the foreign places that I have visited, this is the one that most resembles the United States (with the possible exception of Canada).
For the first two days I stayed in very pleasant B&B in Green Point near the Victoria & Albert Waterfront and spent most of that time walking around town. I managed to see the old Dutch fort and military museum, City Hall where Nelson Mandela gave his first public appearance after being freed from prison, the Company Gardens, the Bo Kaap Muslim neighborhood, and the District Six museum memorializing the forced eviction in the 1960s of the area’s non-white residents to the Cape Flats resettlement area further inland during the height of apartheid.
After two days I met Rev and Merv and stayed with them for the remainder of the week in Villiersdorp, about an hour inland from Cape Town. Villiersdorp is a farming community nestled in the mountains of the Western Cape. The area is stunningly beautiful and produces some the best wines in the world. We visited the town of Franschhoek (“French corner”) settled by Huguenots in the late 17th century and considered by many to be the gastronomic capital of South Africa. After a day visiting the Huguenot memorial we had dinner at an excellent French restaurant and returned to Villiersdorp.
One of the highlights of my visit to South Africa was the opportunity to go cage diving. The best place to do this is in Gansbaai which is about two hours south of Cape Town. The beaches and waters are teeming with seals and the dense seal population has resulted in some of the highest concentrations of great white sharks anywhere in the world. After a brief training session our dive boat headed out from the quay until we were a few miles out. As the crew dropped the cage over the side and baited the water the divers got suited up and waited for the sharks to show up. Each of us took our turn in the cage and were able to see the sharks up close underwater (though not as well as if we had done this in the winter months when the visibility is better). The sharks were truly amazing: graceful, powerful, and silent. They were not nearly as ferocious as they are made out to be in the popular imagination and, for the most part, they seemed more curious and cautious of us than we were of them. The cage dive was at once thrilling, frightening, and humbling. I’m glad that I finally had the chance to experience it.
The main disappointment of my trip to South Africa was that I did not have the chance to see more of the country. I never did get to KwaZulu Natal or to Pretoria. I also missed seeing Robben Island, the prison colony off the coast of Cape Town that housed Mandela and other political prisoners and which is now a heritage site. I had planned to go there on my final day, but the ferry service was cancelled because of rough seas. Oh well, something to save for the next trip. Since I missed out on Robben Island I was glad that at least earlier I had the chance to see the District Six museum. It has been less than two decades since the end of apartheid in South Africa and while the imbalance in political power in the country has largely been eradicated, the economic divisions have not. The country’s robust and diversified economy has lured many migrants from other parts of the continent and brought with it the resulting problems of unemployment and low wages.
The biggest concern among the South Africans I spoke to is violent crime, which is endemic and has risen to alarming levels (although Cape Town is much safer than Johannesburg or Durban). I never experienced any trouble, but I did feel all around me the anxiety and tension related to crime. The ubiquitous presence of razor wire, CCTV cameras, armed guards in even the best neighborhoods, and the warnings not to go out at night served as constant reminders of the risk lurking beneath the pleasant and tranquil atmosphere that I experienced most of the time. Again, the comparisons to the US were stark and unsettling. Despite all this, I found most South Africans optimistic about the future and extremely proud of the changes that their country has made in recent years and how they have transitioned from being governed by one the most odious regimes in the world into a functioning—if imperfect—democracy. South Africa is definitely a country that will require repeat visits to fully appreciate.
So it ends. I am finishing this last entry on my laptop in the Cape Town airport to be posted later. My flight to Nairobi departs in ninety minutes and I will be back in Riruta later this evening. In two days I return to London and then two days after that to New Jersey just in time for Christmas. I’ve been in Africa for nearly four months but it seems like just yesterday that I arrived. At the same time, the richness and variety of my experiences in this part of the world in some ways makes the time seem much longer. I have yet to appreciate fully how my journey in Africa has affected me, but I know that there are few parts of the world in which I have lived where I have developed such a strong sense of feeling at home. The easy-going warmth, genuine friendliness, and unassuming companionship of Africans are gifts that I will never forget and probably never fully appreciate. Evolutionary biologists have long since traced the origins of the first humans to the Great Rift Valley, so perhaps one can argue that any human being who travels to East Africa is experiencing a homecoming of the deepest kind. Maybe that is why the Africans I met often treated me like a long lost relative—on some level I suppose I was. Maybe that is also why I still cannot figure out if my departure from Nairobi in two days will constitute a return home or the leaving of it. T.S. Eliot wrote that “the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and to know that place for the first time.” We’ll see if he is right.
View southward of Cape Town and Table Mountain
12 December 2008
Mosque on Longmarket Street in Bo Kaap, Cape Town
Mosque on Longmarket Street in Bo Kaap, Cape Town
12 December 2008
View of Franschhoek in the Western Cape, South Africa
View of Franschhoek in the Western Cape, South Africa
16 December 2008
Great White Shark in Gansbaai, South Africa
Great White Shark in Gansbaai, South Africa
15 December 2008