Thursday, January 14th - Cape Town, South Africa

Both my room mates were very quiet this morning.  One was up at 5 and the other at 6 but they sat and had coffee and read e-mails, and I really didn't hear them at all.  I got up around 7 and still we sat in our lovely living room / dining room watching the view and relaxing.  It is really quite amazing watching Table Mountain appear and disappear in the clouds which roll over it.  Yesterday we could never see the top as the clouds (table cloth) was so low.  This morning we can actually see most of the top.  The east end is still partially covered but the west, where the chair lift is, is open.  However, there are still wind gusts of 50-60 kph so the chair lift is still closed so we won't be going up there today.  Hopefully we have at least one calm day to make it to the top.

Around 10 we went out for a walk to the Green Market area which is only about ten blocks away.  We found the hop-on hop-off bus office and got some information from them.  However, we decided to do their free walking tours first and take the bus another day when we had more time.  We did the Bo Kaap walking tour in the morning and the Historic City Centre walking tour in afternoon.  In between we had lunch on the Green Market square sitting outside at one of the street side cafes.  There were lots of different street entertainers who seem to just take turns entertaining people in the various restaurants.  After about 15 minutes they move on and another group moves in.  They were all very enjoyable to listen to.

Bo Kaap is the Malay Quarler of Cape Town.  It is made up of very colourful homes in bright pink, blue, green, yellow, purple, etc.   The streets are lovely to look at because they are so colourful and hopefully we got some great photos with the brilliant blue sky and the mountains (Table, Lion's Head and Signal HIll) behind.  We walked up and down the streets, and I do mean up and down as it was very hilly, but at a good pace.  We had an excellent tour guide who had some great stories of the area so it was a very enjoyable tour.  The Malay were actually from an area that we now know as Indonesia which was ruled by the Dutch from the 17th and 19th century.  The Dutch brought them to Cape Town as slaves and they eventually all settled in this area and were called Cape Malay or Cape Muslims.  They continued their Islamic faith and built a mosque in the area.  Slaves from other areas such as Southeast Asia and Madagascar, joined them in the superb and many intermarried.  The Malay language is not used much any more but the Malay food and music and other cultural activities still continue to present day and are enjoyed by everyone in the city and tourists alike.  There is a great Malay Museum that got rave reviews but we didn't have time to go to it and we never did get back to it so something left for the next trip to South Africa.

The Historic Tour was a lot more walking but this time on more level ground.  We walked down toward the waterfront but stopped where the old waterfront was, and then back through more city streets and back up almost to our apartment.  During the tour we saw the Green Market and old City Hall, St. George's Mall, St. George's Cathedral including the Crypt, Company's Garden, Parliament Buildings, Slave Lodge, Parade area, Castle (Fort), Magistrate's Court, and a lot of other beautiful buildings and streets and markets.  Again we had a good tour guide who had a lot of stories to tell.  The government buildings are large and impressive normally with white or light stone buildings, many with dark ornate fences.  One of the buildings, the Parliament itself, is red with white trim around the windows and doors and roof and balcony and it looks very impressive (actually more white than red) and has a statue of Queen Victoria in front of it.  The garden was lovely with tree lined pathways and plenty of benches throughout, and it was a great day to be walking.  The guide pointed out several things that we would not have seen otherwise like sculptures of babies crawling down a tree trunk.  The garden is right behind our apartment so we were there a few times over the next few days.  The squirrels and pigeons were very friendly and Fran got up close and personal with the pigeons one day, having several sitting on her arm.

Some of the most memorable places for me were all related to black slavery and apartheid.  Standing in front of City Hall where Nelson Mandela made his first speech after being released after 27 years in prison, is always moving.  I remember being there in 2006 and it was no different then.  With over 50,000 people, mainly blacks, packed into the park and parade area across from City Hall, and many more blacks celebrating by rioting all across the country, and millions watching on TV, Mandela gave a speech that moved everyone and called for the struggle for human rights in South Africa to continue but he also praised de Klerk, the current President for his recent changes and called for peace and forgiveness of the past and not revenge.  The whole country could have exploded into violence but it didn't, mainly due to Mandela's influence.  It wasn't a perfect situation and indeed there was still a lot of violence and there were deaths but it certainly wasn't as bad as it could have been.  The balcony of City Hall was where it all started and eventually the blacks were given equal rights, including the right to vote which they did in huge numbers in the first election called and Mandela, the former prisoner, became president.  His life was quite amazing and he was truly an inspirational man.

Other moving sights were the slave auction tree plaque, the place where many years ago slaves were auctioned off to their new owners.  While awaiting auction, and sometimes longer, the slaves were held in the nearby Slave Lodge, which we hoped to tour later.  From more recent years, the race classification memorial and benches for whites and for non-whites stood outside an old courthouse where decisions were made on reclassifications.  The story of how classifications were made in the first place and the process for being reclassified were quite moving.  We had already heard a lot of these stories in the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg so we understood only too well what was happening.  And being in St. George's Cathedral where Desmond Tutu still occasionally preaches and walking down the mall where he often stops for coffee was also exciting as he is another great man that I admire.

After the tour we stopped for coffee just off the Green Market Square at an Italian place and then decided to have dinner there as well.  We sat outside and watched the merchants pack up and wheel their wares away from the square.  It seemed like a lot of work to do every day but it seems to happen in a lot of places and I guess the extra work is worth the savings of not having to own or rent a building.  From there we walked back to our apartment and had another early night.

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