After an 11 1/2 hour flight from London (more than 9 hours spent sleeping), we arrived with a shock in the middle of summer. Golf clubs, cricket bags and surf boards were being hauled out of baggage claim. Everyone standing around waiting for an arrival was in short sleeves, light clothes, tan, the younger set in Santa Cruz surf t-shirts and the older in Hawaiian shirts.
Summer, 80 degrees, clear skies, tropical feeling air, and everyone was friendly and cheerful including passport control, custom agents and rental car hire employees. Now that is truly a shock after London.
Derrell got to re-experience being a driver on the wrong side of the car and I got to re-experience being a driver without a steering wheel or pedals on the left side of the car. We managed to stay on the road and not compeletely lose our relationship over trying to determine the correct side of the road to stay upon when making the first few turns. Within the 20 minute drive to the the city and with no major mistakes, confidence in being able to pilot a vehicle (from both seats) returned.
Cape Town is a mix between Sydney and Hawaii. Signs are in English, people are very relaxed, roads are better than the Bay Area, everyone on our path spoke anywhere from excellent to easy-to-parse-without-a-long-pause English. Dutch architecture painted in whites, yellows, blues and spring greens make the place look Martha Stewart finally took some happy pills. And the vegetation has Hibiscus flowers, banana plants, mango trees, spruce trees, cactus and lots of huge old squat Palm trees. This with Table Mountain looming in the background and the Atlantic Ocean sparkling in the harbor. We can see why folks call it one of the prettiest and friendliest cities in the world.
Our hotel, Fritz Hotel, had big spotless rooms and the hotel courtyard/breakfast area came with three cats, one of which befriended us and joined us for each morning for breakfast. Derrell was quite pleased.
Now comes the underbelly of Cape Town. Below the friendliness, charm, spotless bathrooms (even in the downtown pubs), the helpful people… is a huge chism between those with jobs and those without. For the most part, both parties are dealing with a good deal of inflation. And it is this that gains you, whether local or tourist, the lecture about not leaving anything in your car to let the hotel’s car security guard have an easier job, staying out of the city center after dark, after Saturday afternoon and all of Sunday (since most shops are closed), avoiding the townships, and keeping your car windows rolled up when coming up to an intersection. Hmm, the reality of Africa intrudes on this ideallic paradise.
So, with the similarities to Sydney in people’s attidudes and relaxed feel of the town, Derrell wonders outloud ‘Why not just go to Australia?’
Well, we discovered the next day why.
Driving down to the Cape of Good Hope was one of the prettiest drives we’ve ever done. It validly competes, at times, with Highway 1’s Pacific Coast drive.
The first stop on the drive was the amazing Botanical Gardens. After the hubbub of Europe, this place was wonderful. The gardens immaculate, the place huge, the trees smelling great, grass you could walk and picnic upon, and no ‘No!’ signs to be seen. Description placards were abundant, mostly in English, with the larger in three languages: Afrikaans (a 17th century Dutch derivative with English overtones), English and French. The gardens were geared towards native species and yet many were familiar to us from seeing them in Santa Cruz. Lots of plant ex-patriots living abroad.
Back on the drive, we headed through some of the oldest vineyards in Africa and started to spot fancy convertibles, (right hand drive) Ferraris and other cars that had Derrell soon wondering why we were in a Ford Focus on such a nice day on such a pretty road. I pointed out that the focus was “red, at least.”, but I don’t think the color really inspired him any.
On the Indian Ocean side of the drive, one of the town stops is Boulder’s Beach. This (much to the resident’s of the expensive-homes-with-a-private-ocean-view-and-we-used-to-no-visitor-on-this-beach’s dismay) is the home to a flock of penguins that decided to make it their home in 1980’s. Penguins aren’t disturbed by people on land, so a thin stream of visitors head out onto the warm sand, rocks and turquoise water to picnic (in front of said expensive homes) and check the flightless ones out. The penguins really aren’t disturbed about the entire matter. We were standing there watching them from about six feet away and none of them paid us any mind. So with that full task of ignoring of us completed, they did the standard penguin thing on a warm rock, settle down for a good afternoon preaning and nap. Ah, the life of a bohemian penguin flock. They were looking quite similar to the surfer dudes in the area.
From that stop we headed south and discovered baboons along side the road overlooking the beaches. We also soon discovered who was driving that was a tourist versus who sped by knowing that primates are not a unique sight in the south.
From there it was finally into Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve, our southern destination. There is a lighthouse on Cape Point that is 600 feet up. We didn’t take the funicular up, so every bit of that walk was well noted and sunny. Despite the southern location, that walk still tuned both of us a non-hiking shade of pink. Summer, suntan lotion, summer, suntan lotion… cobwebs, begone!
We rounded a circular loop in the park on the drive out and got a few close-up wildlife sightings: joyful ostrich roaming and prancing about glad not to be part of one of the many ostrich/cow/sheep farms in the area, a turtle crossing the road asking itself why, and three zebras plopping down in the scrub for a sitdown rest after a full day of posing for tourists.
On the Atlantic ocean side of the drive, the similarities with the Pacific coast become clear in the evening. The sun sets on the water in the evening here, as well.
Cape Town and the penninsula are easy to navigate, the area is quite similar to home and yet the little details are just enough to make you think about it. Add some summer weather and you can see why Europe evacuates from the dreary London and Amsterdam weather and hits the beaches here.
