Cape Town

The Arrival in Cape Town

We left using a small international airport in Zimbabwe near Victoria Falls on a plane with a destination to Johannesburg.  The flight there was 1 hour long and was from Zimbabwe to South Africa.  We arrived back in the huge Johannesburg airport and collected our bags from storage (that we had left there when we flew to Maun) and hopped on another plane to Cape Town where dad’s cousin Bert greeted us.  It was dark outside when we arrived and we had to go and collect our rental car and when we finally did we spent 30 minutes travelling through the beautifully lit city of Cape Town to Bert’s house, which was situated right on the coast in a place called St James.  A dog whose name was Zuki came out and licked us to death as we exited the car and as soon as I knew where I was sleeping I was so tired I couldn’t even take off my jeans as I collapsed into bed.

Lunch with my Cousins!

It was wet, it was raining, it was windy, all of the things that I didn’t want the weather to be after waking up with a headache at 9:30am in the morning! I was forced out of bed and told to have breakfast since everyone else was ready to go and meet our cousins (well third and fourth cousins). We were going to meet them at a lunch place on the coast of Cape Town near a town called Stellenbosch, which was only 30-minute drive. 

The drive to lunch went past a large number of shantytowns where a large number of immigrants had settled.  They were from neighboring countries such as Zimbabwe looking for a better life.  South Africa has opened its borders and as a consequence there are a large number of people living like this.  The settlement houses are made from anything they can find such as tin and wood.  The houses if you can call them that are shacks around half the size of our classroom.  Extended families live under one roof with no inside toilets and in many cases no running water except for the pump nearby.

I was dumbstruck when we arrived at the table we were sitting at, since a lady, man and a 1-year-old baby who claimed that they were my cousins greeted us and it turns out that they actually were my cousins!  More arrived and more still and by the end I realised that our family wasn’t really that small after all!  The lunch was terrific and my headache was practically gone after having a lovely piece of steak and something to drink.  Our cousin Pippa (who was thirteen) came back home with us and played Murder in the Dark, Hide and Go Seek and enjoyed a lovely soup made by Bert!

The return journey to St James was via Stellenbosch a large town that has a famous university called Stellenbosch University.  The town looked like you were in Holland, the buildings were in the Dutch cape style.  All the signs were in Afrikaans, which is one of the main languages spoken in South Africa.  The Afrikaner people are of Dutch descent that colonised South Africa, starting in Cape Town in the 1600’s.  Most people speak both English and Afrikaans but it is not an easy language to learn.  I guess if you chose to live in Stellenbosch you would have to be an Afrikaner, or be able to speak Afrikaans fluently.

Cape Town and Surrounds

The second day we were in Cape Town we visited the Waterfront, which is in the old docks, similar to the viaduct in Auckland.  We went through the local market place and stopped there with Bert for lunch.  What was of interest on the wharf was a ferry that took tourists to Robben Island.  This is the island where Nelson Mandela was held in prison for 22 years for standing up against the apartheid regime.  Apartheid was the name given to the segregation of people according to their colour.  There were places made around South Africa that separated white people from black people.  For example a public toilet in Apartheid had 4 sections.  One of the sections for black men, another for black women and the other two for white men and white women.  Most restaurants were only for white people and you would only see black people being the waiters, which is another part of Apartheid.  Everyone had to carry around an identification card that told you your name, where you were born and what colour your skin was.  Everybody had to carry one of these with him or her and if you didn’t you could be sent to the police station and have to go before court.  Nelson Mandela is still alive today and turned 95 years old on Wednesday, which is a great achievement.  He was elected Prime Minister of South Africa for a number of years and retired in his 70’s.  He is a major part of history and has sealed his place, as a hero the world will never forget.

In the afternoon we drove to Hout Bay passing through cliff faces made of sedimentary rocks and metamorphic rocks, which my dad explained to me about and I will use in my Science Project.  In a place called Boulders Beach we saw some a large penguins colony that lived all over the side of the hills and on the beach.  The whole bay is only in use for penguins and some other wildlife and you have to pay to go down to the beach.  I also found out about an animal called a Dassie (a rock rabbit), which is a mammal is closely related to an elephant since it has elephant shaped feet but definitely not as big!  Once we had finished looking at all of the animals and watching the burnt orange sun set on the horizon we decided to go back to the house and relax for the rest of the night after yet again another interesting day.

Up Table Mountain

Our final full day at Cape Town was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, the birds were singing and all you could hear were the cars coming past the back of the house.  Today we were going up Cape Town’s famous mountain called the Table Mountain!  After driving below Table Mountain for 1/2 an hour we finally made our way to the Cable Car Station, which was located near the bottom of the mountain - it was definitely a long way up!  We parked the car close to the station with the expert guidance of a parking attendant who are basically self employed people who take it upon themselves to help you out, watch your car and of course expect a tip (of a few dollars).  We queued in the line that was flooding out the doors, no surprise since it had been appalling weather the past few days and people were desperate to make use of the lovely weather.  When we finally went up in the Cable Car I managed to get a great view of the surroundings that were absolutely amazing!  The floor rotated so everybody got a chance to see everything and by the time we were at the top I didn’t want to get off, only to go even higher.  We walked around the flat expanse of the top of Table Mountain and I learnt why the name Table Mountain came about.  It turns out that the top of the mountain is so flat it is like a huge dining table that stretches on for a very long way.  Sometimes went the cloud covers it, it is described as its ‘table cloth’.  We could have stayed all day on the mountain as there are loads of walks however we chose to do a short one instead and then continued back down to the bottom making our way to our next destination, which was the Kirstenbosch gardens.

The Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens

As we walked into the spectacular front gate of the Kirstenbosch Gardens we saw some lovely different types of flowers, ranging from small roses to huge cactuses that were spread all over the property.  They have this term for much of the plants they grow on the craggy rocks and dry conditions called ‘Fynbos’ which means fine bush.  It was amazing and we only had one hour to try and see it all, which was a bit of a disappointment since there was so much to see!  By the end of our experience we were tired and definitely needed to go home, but we knew that we were still going to my cousins house for dinner that night and there names were Nicola, Lloyd and the one year old Baxter. For dinner we had a lovely piece of meat cooked on a Braai (which is the South African term for BBQ but not over gas, but real coals) and talked about what we had done so far in the holidays.  We were sad to leave that night but at the same time excited because the next morning we were leaving Cape Town (via car) across to a place called Wilderness, which is a 5-hour drive up the West coast from Cape Town.

The Dassies or Rock Rabbits!

The Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens

The Cable Car up Table Mountain

The Waterfront in Cape Town