hi there folks and sorry once again it has taken me so long to get this update out, but we are now in the busy, busy, busy season....the semester is ramping up for the end - assessments and comments and performances and such, plus, my choir is performing in three events this year...and the holiday events have started - parties and functions and such.....it a wonderful time of the year....anyway...it has now been a month since i was actually in cape town....and i have to say....what a place.....
cape town is in the southern hemisphere, so i hit it as it was headed into spring in october...which was amazing....i was able to wear jeans and shorts and shoes with socks and sandals...i know, i know...the small things are the ones that matter....but it was great to not be sweating all the time and getting to experience some chilly nights....i loved that....i really have decided that year round heat is not for me....wherever i end up next, i hope it is not tropical 24-7 all year long...i miss seasons and leaves changing and flowers blooming....i really do....and cape town had it....yay....so here are some pictures from this very progressive city and a bit about it and its amazing history, that is still very present today....and really, if this city is not on your bucket list....it should be....but if you are traveling through africa....i would save it for last....it really does have much of its proverbial act together and would be a perfect place to end a trip on this continent in my opinion.....
Literally the first thing i did after i got to the place i was staying was head up table mountain.....i did an air bnb stay and the guy who runs the house told me to not take a nap, not relax and chill, but instead, get myself up table mountain because it was a perfect day....so with only two hours of sleep under my belt, up i went....and what a spectacular day it turned into....he was totally right to send me up, as the rest of the week there were issues of wind and clouds...and when its windy, they close the top....
due to having the two hours of sleep, i opted to take the cable car up and down....but i watched other folks climb both up and down....this was an interesting cable car in that as it went up and down, it turned 360 degrees and as you can see, there were two spots where the windows were open....what a view...but not easy for those afraid of heights....i had two folks in my cable car up who dealt with that....kudos to them for doing it....but as you can see in the background - blue skies and beautiful weather....
this shot is one of my favorites....the clouds in cape town were amazing!!!!! they would get to the edge of table mountain and literally fall over the edge and then disappear....it was wild....and i have never seen anything like it....so in this shot, they are falling towards the city and the ocean and then literally just disappear.....these clouds are known as the "table cloth"....they say the table cloth is formed from a smoking contest between the devil and a pirate who lives on table mountain....but i wanted to really know why this happened, so i did some research...these are known as an orographic cloud formation....where as the clouds come over the mountain they encounter warmer air, and therefore evaporate...not as poetic, but still really cool to see....i loved it and learning something new....
the perfect day for me ended at camps bay...where the wealthy come to play....with a sundowner meal & beer and a beautiful sunset to boot....i think one of the reasons i really liked cape town was you literally could be on a mountain and then at the beach in less than thirty minutes....kind of perfect for all types of people....but this part of beach....way expensive these days....still nice to hang at and watch the sunset :)
of course one of the main things i had to do while in cape town was head to the most southern part of the continent...cape hope...and on the way we stopped to hang with the african penguins...they used to be called the jackass penguins....but i guess the local south africans took offense....i know it wasn't the penguins taking offense....they hang at a place called boulders...although i did run into them in another place later in the trip...robben island...more on that further down....
and here they are....man, i love penguins...i could just watch them for hours...i really tried to get a good shot of them coming out of the water, but was rather unsuccessful...and unfortunately this is where my real camera decided to stop working vertically...lucky for me, my phone takes a darn good picture too...they really reminded me of adelies from antarctica....it was fun to watch them....
here i am on the walk up to the southern most light house on the continent....you can see it over my left shoulder in the distance...there were baboons along this walk....and guards to chase them....they are very cheeky monkeys in that they will steal your bag and jump in your car and run with the goods they take....so we were warned...carry nothing you would not want them to take....
and here it is...the southern most point of the african continent...cape of good hope....you will see more of it in the next picture....but the view from the light house was pretty spectacular....i ran into a ton of tourists at the top and almost missed my ride because i offered to take all of their pictures....crazy tourists....but wow, what a view....
and here i am....on the cape of good hope...the view above is around the corner from this shot...the woman in the picture is from my tour...veronica....she was from cape town and had never been to the cape of good hope or saw the penguins or the other things we did....she and her friend were the first folks i heard speaking the "click" language of the area...it is soooooooo cool to listen too....i asked her to teach me a few words...let's just say, click language is not my forte and i gave her and her friend a huge laugh.....i thought it was cool they decided to take the trip with us to check out the things in their home town they had never seen....
the next day i was off to robben island.....this is the place where nelson mandela was kept imprisoned for 18 years of his 27 years of prison time.....this is the view you have from the boat ride out from cape town to robben island....you can see the city and table mountain behind it....a beautiful sight and mandela said this was one of the things that kept him going...he could see where he wanted to return home to....
this is the entrance to the prison once you get on the island....and such history and men who were here...i never realized so many were imprisoned for their political views and i always find it interesting that so many things have happened in my lifetime that i just didn't know were going on...i really did live in a protected bubble when i was growing up....which i am thankful for...i do find these days with kids having access to everything, they see it all...the good, the bad and the disgusting.....this is the later....
one of the things cape town has done is put up these pictures frames in the important spots of their city, which you can climb on and take a picture of....very creative....i of course had just returned from watching the penguins on this island and was a bit behind...so no climbing for me...as right after this i had to run for the bus ;)
another thing on this island that blows my mind is that the guides are all ex-political prisoners...and that some of the prisoners have opted to move onto the island with their families....i asked the guide i had, in the picture above, why he opted to come back to the place he wanted to get away from as soon as he was free....one reason he gave me was this was better than unemployment....which i was confused by....he then explained the was first imprisoned at the age of 16....he never finished high school...he ended up on robben island at 19....so he never went back to school...as he was here for 7 years....when all of the prisoners were freed they then needed to join the "real world" as he put it, and he had neither the skills, education or money to get an education....so he was unemployed or doing manual labor....when mandela and the other prisoners decided to turn this island into a museum...he jumped at the chance to return and educate people about what happened here and he knew he could succeed at explaining the place.....hence, why he works there now....he was a great tour guide and very knowledgeable about things that had happened there....so i guess in the end, this was a good option....
this is mandela's cell...you may have heard him being called madiba....which is what most folks in south africa call him....this is his clan's name, and any one from this clan, the Thembu can have this name...it is given to him out of respect and love.....he lived in this cell for 18 years in D block...which was for the lowest-of-the-low....or the most influential political prisoners....it was here he wrote his autobiography and what would later become the documents to help rule the south african nation after apartheid was over and he was the first president...he endured many hardships, but did not lose faith....his story is one that should not be forgotten...this island and it being a museum is doing just this....
one of the things i really loved about cape town was its public art and cool art venues...this is a rhino that has been made out of recycled materials....they were doing some awareness of the rhino's plight and i saw many different artist renditions of rhinos around the city...but i liked this one the best, because it also was covered in flowers made by kids.....
the area i stayed in cape town was the area known previously as district six...so i went to visit the district six museum....the district does not really exist anymore...as the government sent everyone who lived here to a township outside of the city, or to a part of the city that was not in this area of prime real estate and tore down their apartment buildings....to this day nothing has replaced those apartment buildings...it is open fields, in the city, where many of the city's homeless have taken up residence....its not a pretty story...and the thing that blew my mind was that this district was composed of people from all over the world, different races and colors, and they got along...but the government wanted the land for white folks to be able to have nice houses and lawns....which never happened....so all of these folks were displaced for no reason....simply amazing....
while i was in the harbour of cape town, i took a harbour cruise....and look what was docked in harbour....cape town's antarctica research ship and ice breaker....it made me smile of course, to be reminded that this is the jumping off point for folks to get to the other side of the continent where i was....love their logo :)
I also saw a lot of lazy harbour seals while in the harbour....just chillin' out where they could find space and some sun to lie in...here is clump of them up close and personal from the harbour boat...
one evening i went up to signal hill for the sunset and got this cool shot of the "table cloth" on top of table mountain....off to the right...you are also looking at the downtown of cape town itself....it was quite a windy day, but we got to see an amazing sunset....as you can see from the next shot....
this is the sunset from signal hill....it was quite cool and windy while we were up top...but it was also a beautiful view....the other funny thing that was happening the entire time we were on top of the hill was that a group of guinea fowl just kept running around groups of people, checking them out and then moving on....i tried to get a good shot of them, but was unsuccessful....next time....i like the shot i did take with the tree limbs and the sunset...very artsy....ha :)
while in cape town i took the time to go to a township and see where colored people (by this i mean anyone who was considered a different color than white) had been relocated during apartheid....these still exist...and interestingly enough, in every township there are two or three chinese shops that are there now too....this particular shot is the section of the township that is not organized and was not built by the government...people are living in corrugated shack houses....and we wandered through a few of the alleys of these shacks...these folks have some forms of electricity, but no one in these dwellings has running water....and man, are they crammed in....the man who was my guide was very bitter about the townships and said to me that i had probably never seen anything like them....i told him i have something very similar to where i live, not 10 minutes down the road....so then he asked me where i lived...and i said ghana....he said - west africa...that's worse than here but does not have the same history.....i am not sure i agree with him...but the townships are like the spot down the street from me called nima....
this was the original part of the township...where houses were actually built for the residents and they have electricity - as you can see from the street light, which he said worked...and these residents have running water their houses as well....the people who live in these houses were the original displaced peoples and they were provided for by the government....they are in a much better living arrangement than the others...i am not saying it is good, but it is better than the corrugated shack houses...of which there five times the number of these types of houses, if not more.....it was interesting to walk around and see what life was like there....
cape town has a beautiful landscape to it...the mountains, the ocean, the surf...its just incredible...as you can see from this picture...this is from the top deck of a bus on the way back into the city....
plus, there is some funky architecture in the city...i loved this building...it was on long street....the place where everyone goes at some point to shop or have diner or have a drink...it has a bourbon street feel to it, as the building are two and three stories and some are victorian style and all have balconies....this one is a backpacker....in other words, long street is the party street....
the last full day i was in town i went on the most amazing winery tour....south africa has some amazing vineyards...and the tour i took was INCREDIBLE.....at each of the five wineries we tasted anywhere from 6 - 10 wines or champagnes and for each place we did a food pairing...the spot we stopped for lunch was a farm that had incredible food....the other four each had their "thing"...the first place used ducks to keep insects at bay in the vineyard....so they had a duck parade....the second place paired each of the wines with a specific chocolate....that the chocolatier and the wine master put together....the third place was lunch, the fourth place specialized in champagne and breads...and the last place did a wine and cheese pairing....oh. my. goodness....it was amazing!!!! and it was a beautiful day and the vineyards were stunning to be in.....loved it!!!!
so i figured i would have to post the last shot with a bottle of bubbly from this amazing vineyard....i was hanging with cool people and having tasty treats all along the way...it was the perfect way to end my outstanding trip to cape town...and really, if it is not on your list, you should add it...i didn't have the chance to get out on a safari, or kayak, or go great white shark cage diving, or swim with seals, or sooooooo many more things....so i will need to get back at some point, as it is an incredible place....
i hope you enjoyed the explanation of the trip and the pictures, as much as i enjoyed living the trip....i am now heading into my craziest time of the year with concerts, and holiday festivities, and grading, and writing comments, and getting ready for the next big holiday trip....where you ask???? this is a big one...maybe the biggest one of all...madagascar and kenya....i will be traveling with my friend sandy for 2 weeks in madagascar....yes, we are seeing a couple of types of lemurs while there......and then i head to kenya to see my friends sandy and jeff and head to maasai mara......both of which are bucket list places....so i am sooooooooo excited.....
but until then...i hope you are all well and enjoy the beginning of the crazy holiday season whether you celebrate diwali, or thanksgiving, or winter/summer solstice, or xmas, or hanukah, or kwanza, or chinese new year....or all of them....happy holidays to you and yours and all the best in 2016...i will be in touch again after the new year....
