Discovering Cape Town

Cape Town's Table Mountain, as I returned from Robben Island on a sunny winter afternoon.

Cape Town – I am in Cape Town, South Africa!

As you know, I love visiting exciting destinations for the first time. In the five days I have been here, I have found it a thrill. If you know nothing about South Africa, Johannesburg is the business centre, the large unattractive city, while Cape Town is the country’s beach town par excellence, South Africa’s San Francisco, the place where you spend your summer hiking, drinking wine or strolling along the waterfront.

“When I first came here, I thought I had found paradise,” a friend of mine tells me, before explaining how racial issues and its distant location from the United States and Europe made him realize paradise did have its limitations. This just to say I know my first upbeat impressions are probably spoiled by the virgin eye of a Latin tourist in search of some fun.

In the first few days here, I have found many similarities between Cape Town and other coastal cities I have visited or lived in. San Francisco, Malibu, Big Sur (all in California), the French Mediterranean and Rio de Janeiro first come to mind – in essence because of their beaches, mild weather, beautiful scenery, large ocean waves, high mountains and posh vacation spots. I stopped making comparisons. I am going to start comparing the others to Cape Town. For starters, none of the above places sit so elegantly at the tip of the world (‘top’ if you look at the map upside down) between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. And, how do you factor Cape Town’s unique ethnic and racial history?

Since arriving here, I have visited some of the most obvious tourist destinations:

Table Mountain: this is the flat mountain overlooking the city for which Cape Town is best known for. The funicular (they call it ‘cableway’ here) takes you up to 1086 meters in five minutes (at a cost of 130 Rand). The view from there is astonishing although it was cloudy when we visited it. I am thinking about going to back to take better pictures and take a longer walk.

Robben Island & Nelson Mandela Gateway: the island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 of the 27 years he was behind bars during Apartheid. I took a 30-minute ferry ride (150 Rand) from the Victoria & Albert Waterfront to the Island. It was a beautiful day and I took a few nice pictures of Table Mountain from the boat. A former Robben Island prisoner gave me a tour of the prison, including a peek at Mandela’s cell. It was an interesting and worthwhile visit but I did not like that the prison has been fully remodeled, looking too sharp painting a much humane and sellable picture of Robben Island than what the history books hold.

Victoria & Albert Waterfront: known as the Waterfront, it’s full of restaurants, shops and hotels and serves as the departure site for various water activities. Some of the more expensive African craft shops I visited include Delagoa, Porcupine and African Trading Port.