Cape Town Adventure - Day 9

For our last day in Cape Town, we wanted to try to finish up with something a little unique to South Africa. We wanted to try to get a glimpse of what a shack-town looks like. I definitely don't have the facts on this yet, but apparently there's a tradition among migratory workers to stake out open land and turn it into an impromptu village. This mixed with the policies of Apartheid, where blacks weren't allowed to live in cities, helped create some densely packed areas of extreme poverty.

Anyway, we were told that under no circumstances were we to visit a shack town without extensive supervision. Heck, we weren't even allowed to drive to one to meet a guide. So, we did the next best thing and hopped on the City Sight Seeing bus, which has an arrangement with Imizamo Yethu Township, to offer tours.

The township tour was an odd mix of emotions. On one hand, you're surrounded by extreme poverty and people who are trying to make a better life for themselves and their children (there's a movement, for example, to build houses to replace the shacks and setup a local school). On the other hand, people were quite friendly, the mood was upbeat and generally there was pride for the little settlement.

Our guide talked about the township in terms of a struggle to right the social inbalance in the region (less than a kilometer from Imizamo Yetho are homes of the super rich in Cape Town, who have better facilities for their horses than these people have for their children). Our taxi driver talked about how the government has attempted to replace the shack towns with real houses, but there are those that like living rent free and so they keep popping up. And then there was the book in the bookstore that glorfied shack-towns as a sort of down-home simpler living (oh look, the children have no real toys so they invent games and are wonderfully friendly) that we should be just a little envious of. In other words, it's a complicated social issue that has no easy answers.

After our Township tour, we had an excellent lunch at Haut Bay. I finally had fish and chips, while Shira had sushi - man deep fried fish is a winner.

From Haut Bay we made our way back to the city center and spent the rest of the day soaking in the last few sites that we could from walking around.

I started this blog post as we were about to board our plane, and it's now been about 8 hours of flying. We've almost covered the length of Africa, though according to the flight map, we have just a little bit more to go.

So, what can I say about Cape Town? In general, it is a wonderful place. As I commented to Shira a number of times: this place is awesome, they measure distances in kilometers and prices in Rand. That means that everything is closer than it seems, and you can divide all the prices by 8 (I can't remember the last time I was at a major city where I could do that!). Cape Town has interesting musueums and history, amazing natural sights to see (Table Mountain, Cape Point, fynbos in the wild) and wonderfully friendly people. We ate quite well here, never having a problem finding vegetarian options to pick from.

For the most part, we felt secure in the city. In a brilliant move to help address the massive unemployment of the country, there's a job known as Parking Marshal that pretty much anyone can take on. Essentially, a person watches over a number of parking spaces on the street. When you park in one of these spaces, they'll "watch over your car" and you tip them when you leave. This flips the mindset of these potentially unemployed from possibly harming you or your car, to protecting both. In fact, the security-as-job-for-the-unemployed really worked quite well, as it means that there were frequently friendly faces around. We did run into some aggressive pan handlers, which made for a tense encounter or two, but that was as rough as things got.

Cape Town really is a must see city. It definitely belongs on your must-visit list.

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Cape Town Adventure - Day 8

As if we didn't get enough hiking in yesterday, we thought we would try a recommended hike at Silvermine Reserve. The terrain was much simpler than Table Mountain, but the vegetation and views were still top notch. One section of the hike to the Elephant Eye Cave was precarious, which reminded us of what we went through yesterday, but again, the views and the cave made it worth the sore muscles.

After Silvermine, we made our way to lunch in Hout Bay via Chapman's Peak Drive. Wow. This drive is highly recommended and the scenery can't be beat. I definitely got white knuckles as I held on while Shira wound her way along the narrow, curvy highway with the ocean below.

We finished the day at the World of Birds and Monkey Jungle, which allowed up close and personal viewing of monkeys and birds without a pesky fence in between you and them. It's ironic that we would do heights and birds in one day, as those are pretty much my two most dreaded things. But, both were worth the discomfort. Even I had to admit the birds were quite an impressive collection.

Still, tomorrow I'm taking Shira to extra museums to make up for this!

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Cape Town Adventure - Day 7

My first thoughts when I saw Cape Town by day were: (1) Wow, what an amazing site Table Mountain is. And (2), how the heck am I ever going to get up there? With my paralyzing fear of hights, this just isn't going to be possible.

Luckily, Shira had made arrangements ahead of time with a guide to take us up, so there wasn't any question - we were doing the mountain.

Today, at around 7:30am we left the road and started hiking up part of the mountain. And up, and up and up some more. The views along the way were amazing. The vegetation was both recognizable (hey, that looks like a pine cone!) but totally foreign (but it's growing out of a small plant, not a pine tree). We scrambled up rocks, traversed valleys and gaped at awesome views.

Along the way, it was our guide Margaret from Table Mountain Walks who kept us going. "It's all easy" was her refrain, and I just kept asking her to repeat this, as I traveled higher and higher up.

Lunch was outstanding, but of course, climbing a mountain and hiking 11km or so, will make almost any food taste great.

With the climb and lunch completed, and the views photographed as well as possible (which is to say, not well at all - how do you capture that much landscape?!) there was only the minor detail of getting down the mountain. We could have opted for the cable car, but please, we wanted the whole hiking experience. So, it was down the Platteklip Gorge for us.

Wikipedia calls this gorge "an easy and direct ascent to the summit." The direct part is correct, the easy part is a bit of an understatement. The gorge is essentially a natural rock staircase that requires quite a bit of care to make your way down.

Down the gorge we trudged. At one point, our guide took out her cell phone and called the cars to pick us up. Only one hour left of walking *down* to go. Ugh.

When it was all said and done, this has to be one of the most challenging and enjoyable hikes we've ever done. I felt like we really took in Table Mountain, and Shira really nailed it choosing Table Mountain Walks as our guide. If you are thinking of hiking up Table Mountain, Margaret is the one you want leading the way!

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Cape Town Adventure - Day 6

One of the highly recommended activities when visiting Cape Town is that of touring wine country. We aren't really big wine people, so I wasn't exactly sure if we were going to indulge. Shira, in a stroke of brilliance, found a perfect solution: we toured a single winery: Zandwijk. What makes Zandwijk so unique is that it's the only fully Kosher winery in South Africa.

We had a wonderful tasting of wine and cheese, an excellent walk around the grounds (including a little chat with Frank, who's been tending the winery for 29 years!) and generally got a flavor of the whole wine tour thing.

From Zandwijk, we made our way to Franschhoek, an adorable little town in the heart of wine country. They had all the essentials there: excellent food, a cute museum, more gardens and most importantly, gelato.

I finally got to try some South African food (or so I was told), including some cold pickled fish in a curry sauce and Bobotie - a yummy lentil dish. Both were quite delish.

We finished up our evening with another critical sight seeing location: the nearby casino. As casinos go, it was remarkably in almost every way: they had an impressive number of reasonably priced restaurants, a large kid friendly arcade, a movie theater and even an ice skating rink. Unfortunately, they don't have craps, and the blackjack tables were on continuous auto-shufflers. Feh. So, it was impressive in every way *except* the gambling. Still, we actually walked out of there a few Rand ahead. Always a treat, regardless of the currency.

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Cape Town Adventure - Day 4

Today was a walk-around-and-see-the-local-sites day. Cape Town definitely didn't disappoint. The Castle is not only interesting architecturally, but contains, 3, count 'em 3, museums. I enjoyed each thoroughly.

We also made our way to the Slave Lodge, which tells of the horrific slave conditions within Cape Town itself.

Finally, we made our way through Company Gardens, where we found the oldest tree to be cultivated in South Africa.

I admit it, there were more museums to go to, but even my brain was too full to take in any more information.

Of all the sites we saw, one of the most impressive was an exhibit on Hugh Tracey. Tracey apparently went throughout Africa recording the various types of music performed by the natives.

I can just imagine Hugh explaining to his parents his chosen profession. You want to do what now, son? Are you kidding me?

All in all, a most fun day. And there's still plenty for us to see and learn around town. I know Shira's excited to no end for this.

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Cape Town Adventure - Day 5

Today started with a trip to Robben Island - the offshore prison which was used to house political prisoners during Apartheid. The island's history starts quite a bit before that, when it served as both a prison and leper colony. In other words, this was never really a place you wanted to find yourself.

As if the tour, fascilities and general atmosphere weren't enough to drive home the occasion, the actual tour through the cell block is done by a former inmate. Our guide had served 7 years on the island, and shared some harsh stories. It just boggles the mind that as I was in middle school, there were inmates in this jail, serving under the harshest of conditions. And now, tour groups of all nationalities can walk through the area.

After the island, we made our way to Goldies, a Kosher restaurant in Cape Town. I pigged out on schwarma and chips, it was outstanding.

We finished the day with a trip to Kirsenbosch Gardens. As botanical gardens go, it was outstanding. There were quite a few plants that I'd never seen anything quite like.

One tip, if you visit the gardens: you can take a path up towards table mountain. Don't, as we did, assume that it loops back around into the gardens. After about 45 minutes of walking, we finally got the hint that we were no longer on the grounds of the gardens. We did indeed make it back without problems, though for future reference, it's a great place to start some long hikes. Just make sure you intend to do this before you set out.

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Cape Town Adventure - Day 3

What an adventure we had today! It all started with renting a car, and making our way to Cape Point, the very southern tip of South Africa. This would be tricky enough to do in a foreign city, but throw in the fact that they drive on the wrong side of the road, and this becomes really interesting.

Along the way, we stopped for a most excellent breakfast in Simon's Town (how could we not stop?), where I got a nice dose of museum viewing in.

From Simon's town, we made our way to Boulder's beach, where we saw the colony of Penguins which set up shop there in the 80's. The life of a penguin looks pretty chill - lots of sitting around getting admired by tourists with an occasional dip in the water for some fishing.

After the penguins, we made our way to Cape Point. As you would imagine, the views from this Southern most point were spectacular. After schlepping up the hill to the old lighthouse, we made our way to the actual Cape of Good Hope.

In college, I infamously flubbed an essay when I blanked on who or what a Vasco Da Gama was. I wrote extensively about how this related to the Samurai of Japan (yeah, I was reaching in a major way that day). Of course, Da Gama was an explorer - but not just any explorer, he was one of the first to sail around the Cape of Good hope and on to India. It was fitting, therefore, that I should finally get to glimpse the history I so massively butchered in college.

A number of people, and signs, warned of baboons in the park. They have a reputation for snatching the food right from your hand. As we stepped out of the car, and got ourselves ready, we heard rustling in the bushes nearby. I calmly told myself it was just the shrubs making my imagination act up. As we turned and walked through the parking lot, a couple of toursists were in front of us carrying their picnic lunch. Sure enough, out of the bushes appeared a baboon, who deftly snatched the bag of food and carefully opened it up to eat as his own lunch. So classic.

This was truly an awesome day with awesome sights.

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Cape Town Adventure - Day 2

We woke up for the 2nd day of our Cape Town adventure surprisingly refreshed. We spent most of the day at the V&A waterfront. But, have no fear, there's a maritime musuem and aquarium there, so I learned about history and science in the process.

A big accomplishment was setting up our cell phone's to operate here. We purchased a SIM card from Vodacom, which was a pretty painless experience. The card itself cost about 2 bucks, though the minutes aren't quite as cheap. Before you can utilize your phone on an alternate network you need to get Unlocked. This used to be a somewhat sketchy process, as the phone carriers had no incentive to allow you to do this (essentially, you have a phone that's locked into them). Apparently, things have changed for the better in this department, as all I needed to do get my phone unlocked was to call T-mobile and ask them for a special code. Not sure if all cell companies are this accomodating or if T-mobile stands out in this department.

Another unexpected treat: we had the most delicious and authentic falafel today. Seriously, it was like eating on the streets of Tel Aviv.

Tomorrow we hope to get out of the city and do a bit of exploring of the nearby area. No matter what happens, driving on the left side of the road, guarantees it's going to be a big adventure!

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Cape Town Adventure - Day 1

25 hours ago we left our door step, and in just a few minutes, I hope to hit the sack in Cape Town, South Africa.

All things equal, this has been an amazingly easy journey. Our flights with KLM were both above average. Sure, we had a few hiccups (they lost my vegetarian meal the first flight, Shira's video capability was broken the second flight), but all in all, we came out ahead. Through a bit of luck, for our 11 hour flight, we were seated in Economy Plus. Nowhere near as exciting as getting upgraded to business class, but still a victory when every inch of legroom counts. And KLM's entermainment options are top notch, with what seems like dozens of movies to pick from.

We also have a new favorite airport: Amsterdam's. Where else do you have a museum and library for me to poke around in, and a casino with table games for my wife to kill some time at?

One highlights of the flight (besides seeing Battle Los Angels - whoo, what a fun movie!), was getting a glimpse at some of the African desert. I snapped a few pictures of it, but they don't do the scenery justice. It didn't look like thee were signs of life for miles and miles.

As for Cape Town itself, we really havnen't seen anything yet. Everyone has been quite kind to us, and there's not the usual rushing that seems to happen when checking into a US hotel.

Tomorrow the real fun begins.

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