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| There were surfer-dudes, but no white sharks | Yes, mountains and coastline, didn't get it all wrong |
The reality was a bit different. For one, no white sharks, because a couple of Orca learned how to come up underneath them, smash them open, and eat their livers (and only the livers). The great whites scattered, to the chagrin of all the “shark cage dive experience” attractions along the waterfront.
Cape town and South Africa in general seem to fall somewhere between the first and third world. It isn’t actually the southernmost tip of the continent; there’s a long peninsula below it, some of which we explored. The city is, indeed, nestled between mountains and the coast (facing the Atlantic) and seems general upscale. But then you see the shanty town of wall to wall corrugated steel huts that literally stretch for miles, you see the historic sights like the Castle of Good Hope crumbling in disrepair, you appreciate the generator the hotel has so during the scheduled blackouts for six hours every day the lights in your room work, and you start to feel that things are a little off. It is a beautiful area; there are all the trappings of wealth in the walled rich white communities, but it still seems like there’s a huge divide between the haves and the have nots that’s more clearly defined than in the states.
Hotel on the left, rich white people walled enclave on the right, Table Mountain in back
 Our hotel |
 Welcome to Cape town |
Shantytown went on for miles. Love the satellite dishes.
We stayed at the Cape Grace hotel. The Cape Grace was cool; antiques lined the walls and it had unique chandeliers on each floor. The corridors had a vaguely creepy "The Shining" vibe to them.
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The restaurant was nice and had views out over the harbor, which were particular stunning at sunset. Above, the view from the balcony of our room; below, from the restaurant.
We arrived in the afternoon and spent a little time walking the waterfront area, which is Cape Town’s happening tourist spot, as well as a working dock with everything from small sailboats to freighters and other large ships pulling in and out.
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We started the next day with our guide Michael driving out to
Simon’s Town on the peninsula south of Cape Town, taking a route through
the mountains. Michael was well versed in the history of South
Africa and neighboring African states, from Cape Town’s origins as a
Dutch East Indies stopping point for ships to its current political
climate, so we had plenty to keep us busy as we did the 45-minute drive.
In Simon’s Town, we saw the penguins in the driving rain. Dave had
forgotten to pack his (brand new, safari-approved-colors) rain jacket,
but we purchased something (safari approved colors) in a sports store on
the waterfront the day before as a replacement. Which would have
been great if it had actually been waterproof. But it was fairly
warm out, so it was all still good, sopping wet fun, and our guide
earned his tip by pretending it was business as usual.
The penguins were cool, but the setup makes it feel like you’re in a
zoo; board walks and artificial nests gave the impression of a man-made
penguin habitat rather than their natural state.
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Less like a zoo, the baboons. We’d seen a warning sign about baboons driving into town, which we dismissed as the equivalent of “beware of moose” signs in New Hampshire; sure, once or twice a year someone would run into them, but it wasn’t going to be you. Driving back, we were driving along a wall next to the road when we whipped by something small and fuzzy eating an apple. “Ahhh... what was that?”
Michael stopped the car (making sure we closed everything, including windows) and we walked into monkey mayhem. A troop of baboons were running through the streets, ducking into shops and coming out with loaves of breads and handfuls of fruit, scampering up drainpipes and running across rooftops. Definitely didn’t feel like Kansas anymore.
From there, we drove along the coast, stopping at a small, quaint, colorful fishing village that had the same problem with seals that Simon’s town had with Baboons.
 Got fish? |
 Yep. Still raining. |
Next stop was the Norval Foundation, an art museum that seemed more like someone with wheelbarrows full of money needed space for their private art collection than a public institution. A few others chipped in (you could get your name on their founder's wall for $1,000 US) but it seemed mostly the Norvals.
The building was actually spectacular; it's the only place we can remember where we took pictures of the bathrooms because they were so cool.
Oh, and it had art too. The outside sculpture garden was actually better than the inside of the museum, mixing large format sculptures with native plants and a number of prominent signs that said: "Stay on path... snakes!"
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That evening (7/2), we were doing the jet setter thing (Alison refers to it as being "bougie"), meeting Matt, Alison and their daughter for dinner; it was complete coincidence they were visiting Cape town the same time we were. We met at the Kloof Street House, described as "richly furnished dining rooms in a Victorian house with bar and leafy gardens." Which was true, and it seemed super trendy, with all the young hip crowd jamming into the noisy but fun interior while we took a table at the nice but much quieter patio.
The next day was a driving tour of Cape Town and the surrounding communities because the weather continued made our original plan to visit Table Mountain (a landmark of Cape Town) untenable, with low lying clouds and rain socking in even relatively low areas.So the driver we hired to haul us around and tell us about Cape Town (Ash) took us around the shoreline to see different communities in the Cape Town area. Mostly the upper scale rich communities, but some of the unique, previously not-so-rich communities undergoing radical gentrification (and therefore pretty rich communities). We finished with Ash at the Castle of Good Hope, the oldest existing building in Cape Town. It's in the middle of town (when it was built, it was on the shoreline, but Cape Town has a lot of what the call "reclaimed land" instead of land fill).
Seaside town (Camp's Bay) from Camp Bay beach with socked-in Table Mountain in the background
The previously low-rent Bo-Kaap district (bo-kaap means "above the cape" in Afrikaans, which is a a mix of 17th century Dutch and indigenous Khoisan), originally built to house slaves, now an up-and-coming middle class neighborhood
A copy of Nelson Mandela's glasses, looking at Robben Island where he was imprisoned from 1964 to 1982
 Castle of Good Hope, unfortunately crumbling in disrepair |
 Instead of "children playing..." |
We had the driver drop us off in the afternoon so we could visit the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art. As with the Norval, the building was more interesting than the art was. The building was a converted grain silo(s) that had been carved open to create a giant center space of enigmatic curves.
The art was to art as Trump is to politics; smash-mouth, in your face messaging. Colonialization bad, check. The woman with the giant penis hat ... well, I'm sure there was a message there somewhere. "Don't wear penis hats," maybe.
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 More art than the art |
 Really? |
Ok, the giant dragon with an antelope skull for a head was cool
Building ... totally cool
That night we had dinner at the Cellers-Hohenort, a hotel in nearby Constantia valley who's sprawling estate is surrounded by three century old gardens. The restaurant and grounds where beautiful, and the bar (named "The Martini") looked fabulous, although the cocktails (in what we were to learn is a common problem everywhere in South Africa) were too sweet.
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The next day, we were intending to head straight for Stellenbosch, South African wine country, but in a stroke of luck, the rain and clouds dissipated in the morning, leaving Table Mountain clear for the first time since we arrived. The nice thing about having a private driver/tour guide is you can change plans instantly. Dave purchased tickets to the Table Mountain tram and we were off to see one of the iconic sites of Cape Town.
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And then we were off to Stellenbosch...