SAN FRANCISCO TO CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

May 8 -10, 2018

I left Benicia on Tuesday afternoon, just under a week after arriving from Mexico.  I wasn’t really ready to go, but the trip was planned and there was no backing out.  Sandra, one of my lovely innkeepers, drove me to BART and then I took a train for an hour and fifteen minutes to the San Francisco airport, arriving in plenty of time to check in and relax.

The first leg of my journey was an overnight flight from San Francisco to London, Heathrow.  I flew on British Airways.  I had always enjoyed flying on British Airways but, although the food and drink remained superior, the Airbus 380 was the most uncomfortable plane I had ever been forced to endure.  I was in the very last row, making it nearly impossible to recline.  While there were two empty seats next to me, the armrests did not fold out of the way, so I was unable to stretch out.  There was so little leg room that I couldn’t even lean forward and rest on the tray table, despite having brought a pillow for that purpose.  When the person in front of me reclined, I had to move over to an unoccupied seat just to be able to use the tray table.

I slept for maybe two hours of the journey, finally giving up and watching a number of Oscar nominated films that I had missed while living in Mexico.  The curry I had for dinner gave me indigestion, so I skipped breakfast.

We arrived at Heathrow Termimal 5.  My layover was so long that my connecting flight was not listed.  I sat in the seats in the airport train station until they finally indicated which terminal I would need to find.  Then I took the train from the C gates to the A gates before boarding a bus to ride twelve minutes to Terminal 3.  Heathrow had grown substantially in the seventeen years since I was there last.  Having arrived at Terminal 3, I had to go through security again before finding my way to the immense departure lounge.  It was about 2:30 pm when I arrived and my flight to Cape Town was not due to leave until 9:40 pm.  The gates were not announced until an hour before flight time, so everyone was forced to wait amidst a giant shopping mall.  There was no peaceful gate in which to relax.  Fortunately, there were plenty of power outlets, so I was able to charge my phone.

London, Heathrow

I got a latte and bought some antacid, glad that credit cards were accepted everywhere, since I had no pounds with me.  I didn’t feel well enough to eat, which would have relieved the boredom to some extent.  In a way, it was good that I couldn’t sleep because I wanted to sleep on the plane and arrive acclimated to the new time zone.

By the time our gate was announced and I made my way to the far end of the terminal, it was already time to board.  I had tried to exchange my seat for a window so that I could sleep, but the flight was full and I had no success.  I had a middle seat for the second, eleven-and-a-half hour leg from London to Cape Town.  Despite being trapped in the middle, it was more comfortable than the previous night because I had enough space to lean forward and rest upon the tray table.  I refrained from eating dinner, so didn’t feel ill all night.  I had a gin and tonic, watched a movie, and tried to sleep.

I can’t say that I slept well.  My neck kept getting stiff.  I did manage to get enough rest to keep me functional.  Africa is a huge continent.  We flew across it for nine hours.  I abandoned trying to sleep by 6:00 AM, ate a cookie, and watched another movie.  When breakfast came around, I managed to eat some of it.  We finally arrived in Cape Town at 10:40 in the morning.

Evidence of the water shortage in Cape Town was everywhere.  There was water conservation propaganda even on the jetway.  The message was repeated as we walked through the airport to international arrivals.  Passport control and customs went smoothly and I found my driver straight away.  We had to wait quite a while for the other three people from the tour, however.  I had time to use the ATM to get some rand before they arrived.  Once we were all accounted for, we drove twenty minutes in a nice Mercedes minivan to the Radisson Blu Hotel in the Central Business District of Cape Town.

Our Room at the Radisson Blu in Cape Town

Our room was small, but comfortable.  While we did have separate beds, they were shoved together, which seemed a bit odd but worked okay in the end.  I didn’t want to waste my whole day sleeping, but I did need a nap.  I slept until just before 3:00 and just managed to catch the 3:00 shuttle from the hotel to the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront shopping area. 

The Victoria and Alfred Waterfront Mall

The V&A Waterfront shopping mall is quite extensive and very modern.  The shopping mall is enclosed and then there is a large outdoor area featuring many restaurants, street performers, and a huge ferris wheel.

I snacked on a baguette with chicken liver pate and had a lovely latte in an outdoor restaurant.  The quality of the food was excellent and the prices lower than in the United States.  After lunch, I went up in the ferris wheel to get the lay of the land and take photographs.  The topography around Cape Town is quite stunning.  Table Mountain, a huge flat mesa, dominates the skyline, towering over all the manmade features of the town.  The Central Business District clusters around the harbor and it was only a short drive from the hotel to the harbor.

The Ferris Wheel in Cape Town

Cape Town Business District from Above

After my ride, I walked around the perimeter of the shopping mall, past all the tour boats, and then cut through a fancy hotel to continue my walk along the breakwater back to where the shuttle discharged and collected passengers.  It was nearly 5:30 by the time I finished my walk and I was ready to return to the hotel for the second installment of my nap.

Cape Town Harbor

Jan, Ramona, and their daughter, Electra, arrived about 11:00.  I had been sleeping but was glad to see them.  Ramona’s luggage had accidentally been taken by another passenger.  She introduced me to her daughter who would be my roommate and then left us since we were all tired.  I sat up until Electra got herself settled and then returned to bed to sleep off the last of my jet lag.

May 11, 2018

We were awakened by a wake-up call at 6:30. Since there was no water for showers, it didn’t take us long to complete our morning ablutions.  We were down at the restaurant for breakfast by 7:00 and I met the rest of Ramona’s family: her sister, Lucy, and Lucy's husband Ciro, her niece, Monica, and Monica's husband, Meo.  There were lots of breakfast choices, but I stuck to dried fruit and a little granola with yogurt.  They had an amazing coffee machine that produced perfect espresso drinks.  We had plenty of time to eat before reporting for our tour orientation at 7:50.

Ramona & Jan Posing in Front of Chapman's Peak

                                                                                                                  

South African Coast

Long Beach Near Simon's Town

We met our tour guide, Dale Wesson, and the rest of our tour group at the orientation.  There were only 24 of us including Dale, so it was a nice, manageable group.  After reviewing the program for our coming tour and going over some basic rules, we boarded the bus and set off on a tour of the Cape Peninsula.  We drove south along the coast through Camps Bay, Llandudno, and Hout Bay.  The coast was spectacular and reminded us of Big Sur.  Pricey homes lined the hillsides overlooking the water.  Three point four million people live in the greater Cape Town area.  While most of the communities looked prosperous, we did see some makeshift settlements where illegal immigrants from other parts of Africa were living in shipping containers and tar paper shacks.  Many towns had baboon monitors whose job it was to chase the troupes of baboons out of town so that they didn't break into houses and raid people's refrigerators.

Ostrich at Cape Point Ostrich Farm

The southern portion of the Cape of Good Hope forms the Cape of Good Hope Reserve.  We entered the park and were told to keep an eye out for baboons and eland along the way.  The only exotic animals we actually saw were ostrich at an ostrich farm by the side of the road.

The Cape of Good Hope

We drove to the parking lot below the Cape Point Lighthouse and then hiked up the hill to the lighthouse itself.  The coast was quite scenic and it was impressive to visit such a major milestone for sailors.  From the lighthouse, we could see water on both sides of the cape.  Despite it’s storied reputation, the Cape of Good Hope is neither the southernmost tip of Africa nor the point at which the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic.  Instead, it divides Table Bay, with the Cape Town harbor, from the more sheltered False Bay where the South African navy is based.

There was one baboon mingling with the tourists in the parking lot when we returned, his behavior little different from that of the vendors hoping to liberate a few rand from the visitors.

Baboon Begging in the Parking Lot

After spending an hour at the Cape of Good Hope, we got back on the bus and drove north to Simon’s Town where we stopped for lunch.  We ate at the Seaforth Restaurant at Boulder Beach.  We had lovely sea bass for lunch with rice, salad, and crusty fresh bread.  After lunch, we walked down the beach to a boardwalk where we were able to observe African penguins nesting.  Most of the chicks had grown quite large, but still sported downy grey feathers.  They lounged about in the sun and on the rocks.  When annoyed, the birds made a sound like a donkey braying.

Mother and Large Chick

Boardwalk at Boulders Beach

African Penguin

Penguins at Boulders Beach

False Bay from Boulders Beach

Fortunately, the boardwalk kept the people separated from the birds.  Some well-meaning organization had built fiberglass shelters for the penguins, but they were too hot to be used except during the winter cold.  We got our fill of gawking at penguins and then strolled back along the roadway, checking out the shops and roadside vendors and stopping for ice cream in a charming garden setting.

Ice Cream Stand in Simon's Town

Kirstenbosch Gardens

From Simon’s Town, we continued up the east side of the cape through Fish Hoek to Muizenberg where we turned inland and drove to Kirstenbosch to visit the botanical garden originally planted by Cecil Rhodes when he was the richest man in all Africa.  The gardens were truly lovely and filled with interesting plants found only in that part of South Africa.  The Cape Region is the smallest of the six floral kingdoms in the world.  In contrast, the Boreal Region encompasses all of North America, Europe, North and Central Asia and North Africa.  In the garden, there were flowers and lily ponds.  We climbed up the hill to walk along a wooden walkway through the forest canopy.  The walkway swayed in the breeze and it began to rain.  The garden was beautiful and it would

Canopy Walkway at Kirstenbosch Gardens

have been nice to linger, but the rain grew heavier and heavier, so we picked up the pace and returned to the visitor center where we had time to visit the much drier conservatory full of succulents and cactus.

It got darker and gloomier as we returned to Cape Town from Kirstenbosch.  We had an hour and a half to relax (or write) before meeting the group for cocktails and a welcome dinner together.  Ramona and I chatted in Spanish with a family from Colombia.  Dinner was tasty but unremarkable.  Still, after traveling alone so much in Mexico, it was nice to be surrounded by friends and I had really enjoyed the day.

It was after 9:00 by the time we got back to our room and I could barely stay awake long enough to finish writing about the day before falling asleep.

May 12, 2018

The 6:30 AM wake-up call came very early after having been up half the night with the worst indigestion I had ever experienced.  It seemed that my system hadn’t been quite right since whatever it was I ate in La Cruz.  With no water for showering, it didn’t take long to get ready.  I didn’t dare eat much, but munched a few crackers with cheese.

Colorful Houses in Bo Kaap

By 8:00 we were on the bus and headed for the Table Mountain cable car.  Unfortunately, the top of Table Mountain was covered by clouds, so there was no point in going up there to see the view.  We rescheduled and did our city tour first.  Our first stop was Bo-Kaap, the Malay district of Cape Town where the houses are painted in brilliant colors like Easter eggs.  We stopped to take photographs and walked a short distance past a lovely, mint-green mosque.

Dutch East India Company Vegetable Garden

Statue of Cecil John Rhodes

Cape Town is not a particularly old or historic city, so there wasn’t really much to see on the city tour.  We spent an hour or so walking through the former Dutch East India Company 

Guest House

vegetable garden (now a lovely park) and past the guest house where dignitaries were housed which is now the office of the president when he is in town (he wasn’t.)  We walked past Parliament.  South Africa has different capitals for the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government.  Cape Town is the legislative capital.

Parliament

Former Slave Lodge

We stopped for half an hour at Green Market Square where vendors were setting up a market.  Some of our tour members shopped, others drank coffee, but I merely sat on the steps of the old city hall and watched the people, trying to avoid the large flock of pigeons that a group of Asians were encouraging.

From the square, we walked past the former slave lodge where slaves brought from other parts of Africa were sold.  The Bushmen, who were the original people of the Cape area were never enslaved.  Unfortunately, they mostly died out, anyway.  

St. George Cathedral

Our next stop was the St. George Cathedral where Arch-Bishop Desmond Tutu had been headquartered.  There was a lovely wooden archway erected in his honor (an arch for an Arch.)  There was also an elaborate Methodist church prominently advertising that gay people were welcome.  Cape Town is the gay capital of South Africa (and maybe Africa, as well) and the society is very accepting, allowing same-sex marriage and adoption of children.  In South Africa, almost anyone can adopt a child, since they feel that children are always better off with some kind of a home than in an orphanage.  South Africa is also very tolerant of different religions, since no one religion comprises more than 20% of the population.

Methodist Church

Back on the bus after our walk, we headed once more for Table Mountain, but found it still socked in.  We drove, instead, to the top of Signal Hill where we could just barely make out the Sea Point district and the waterfront through the low clouds.  They fire a cannon from Signal Hill every day at noon.  When we were there, paragliders were jumping off the cliff, eventually landing on the beach below.

No View from Signal Hill That Day

Maiden's Cove - Table Mountain Still Socked In

From Signal Hill, we drove down and along the coast through Sea Point, stopping for a bit to watch the surfers at Maiden’s Cove.  It was a spectacular spot with striking granite boulders forming tide pools and large surf crashing onto a white sand beach.  After our visit, we continued south along the coast to the waterfront, where they let us off near the Robben Island Ferry landing where we had a hour-and-a-half of free time to shop and eat before our ferry left at 1:00.

Surfers at Maiden's Cove

Cape Town Waterfront

I needed to buy a warm jacket and a luggage lock, so I left the others to eat lunch and dashed across the swing bridge over the harbor to the far side where the shopping mall was located.  Having been there a couple of days prior, I knew exactly where I was going and descended to the Pick and Pay on the lower level.  Pick and Pay had a lovely selection of food items, but I zoomed through that section straight to the hardware section where I found the padlocks.  They only had one combination option, so I grabbed a couple of those and continued on to the clothing section.  I was hoping to get a sweatshirt saying “South Africa” or something but had to settle for a down vest by a maker that I could have purchased at Target.  It wasn’t very African, but it was warm and comfortable with pockets to keep my hands warm and a nice hood.  At 399 rand (about $32), the price was right.  Having accomplished my shopping, I was free to find Electra, Jan, and Ramona and drink a beer while they ate their lunches.

The Robben (“seal” in Dutch) Island ferry terminal did double duty as a museum about the struggle to end apartheid.  We read the historical placards on the walls as we waited in the long line to go through security before boarding the boat.  The ferry ride to the island took about half an hour.  We sat outside on the upper deck.  It was a little chilly, but not bad enough to make me break out my new vest.  A group of young soccer fans in town for a game sang an African chant on the way across and the other passengers applauded them.

Robben Island, Cape Town, and Table Mountain with Its "Tablecloth" of Clouds

Electra at Robben Island

Upon our arrival at the island, we were loaded onto a bus with a local guide and spent an hour touring the island.  Robben island was originally a leper colony.  Once a cure was developed for leprosy, the island was converted to a prison in 1960.  The first prisoners were criminals and they were forced to work in the lime and stone quarries.  Beginning in 1962, political prisoners were housed on the island.  Originally, the political prisoners were housed with the convicts, but the authorities became concerned that the political prisoners were influencing the criminals, so they were separated once they had quarried enough stone to build a new prison for the convicts.  We stopped on the far side of the island to look at the view of Cape Town and see the few penguins that were nesting there.  Then we headed back to the prison.

Robben Island Prison

Our Guide, a Former Prisoner

A Cell for Sixty Prisoners

Nelson Mandela's Cell at Robben Island

The second part of our tour was conducted by a gentleman who had been a political prisoner at Robben Island for seven years.  He showed us the large, common cell where he and 59 other prisoners had been forced to sleep on mats on the floor with no sheets or pillows and no glass in the windows to keep out the wind and the rain.  The more dangerous prisoners, such as Nelson Mandela, were housed in small individual cells with blacked out windows so they couldn’t see each other and only buckets for toilet facilities.  They were not allowed to speak to each other. 

The group was herded slowly down the cell block past Nelson Mandela’s cell where everyone stopped to take a picture.    We exited into the exercise yard and I would have liked to explore and photograph the prison, but we suddenly realized that we only had five minutes to walk a rather long way back to the ferry boat, so we detached ourselves from the group and scurried back to catch the 4:00 ferry.  We were all tired and napped indoors on the ferry ride back to Cape Town.

The Day Mandela Was Freed

Table Mountain had never shed its mantle of clouds, so we did not attempt to fit in a trip to the top before our dinner.  We actually had an hour to relax and/or write before it was time to catch the taxi that would take us to eat dinner in the home of a South African family.

We ate dinner at the home of Shane and Barbara Brookes and their children Abby and Jamie.  They cooked us a fabulous traditional meal of butternut squash soup with fresh bread, vegetables, salad, chicken, and bobotie, a sort of pie made from curried ground beef with raisins topped with an egg and cream mixture.  It was all scrumptious, but we all favored the bobotie.  As sick as I had been, I was skeptical about eating curry but I couldn’t help myself.  Dessert was malva pudding, a rich, moist, apricot cake topped with creamy custard.

Our Home-Cooked Meal

Our Hosts, the Brookes Family

Monica and Meo had bailed at the last minute, so it was just four of us and four of them.  It was a very intimate dinner.  We shared a bottle of wine and the men drank beer.  We talked about many things, especially about the need for educational systems to provide different kinds of learning experiences for different types of learners, rather than just medicating the children who struggle with traditional academic settings.  The family was very hard working.  Besides having regular jobs and hosting dinners for tourists, the family also made custom candles and baked cupcakes and muffins.  The home was the South African version of a suburban ranch style.  It was bright and comfortable, with a large converted garage area that they used for entertaining.  We spent a couple of hours with them before our taxi returned to shuttle us back to the hotel.  It had been a long day and we were asleep by 9:30.

May 13, 2018

We had another early start on Sunday because our tour of the winelands left at 8:00.  I awoke early, so got up and was down at breakfast by 6:45.  I ordered pancakes and was disappointed to receive crepes that were cold before I could get any butter onto them.  I ate some fruit and had a latte before returning to the room to write for half an hour.  Our schedule was so packed that I was having a hard time keeping up with my blog and there was a lot to remember.

"Informal Settlement" Outside Cape Town

There were only eleven of us on the Winelands tour, but poor Dale had a hard time keeping us corralled.  We drove for an hour or so past “informal settlements” (formally called townships) in the Cape Flats area.  Many of these dwellings were tin or tar paper shacks.  “Townships” were so called because, under apartheid, groups of black and colored (Indian and Malay) people were often shipped to outlying areas when the white people decided that they wanted their land.  Whole communities were forcibly relocated to less desirable areas.  Today, the government is attempting to replace these settlements with less fire-prone housing projects but there are a million illegal immigrants in the Cape Town area and these people do not want to move because they are not eligible for the government housing.  Having to rely on public transit, they also resist having to move further from the city center.  Public transit in South Africa is dominated by minivan collective taxis.

Church in Stellenbosch

Our First Glimpse of the Winelands

Our first stop of the morning was the town of Stellenbosch, a quaint village of Cape Dutch architecture.  The original 17^th century town burned to the ground when the thatched roofs caught fire.  After that, they built a system of canals to bring water into the town to fight fires.  These channels exist to this day and we were warned not to fall into them as we wandered about the town.

Water Channel in Downtown Stellenbosch

 We arrived at Stellenbosch just as the shops were opening at 9:00.  There were many lovely, high end shops and galleries.  I was attracted to the ostrich leather handbags but put off by the Beverly Hills prices.  I mostly settled for taking photographs but did buy a colorful papier mache hippopotamus that would go well with my small collection of carved wooden animals from Mexico.  I wandered and then sat with Jan, Ramona, and Electra outside a bakery while they drank coffee.

When it was time to leave, Ramona’s sister, Lucy, was nowhere to be found.  We had to send out a search party to locate her.

The Scenery Near Stellenbosch Was Stunning

In the Stellenbosch region, we visited the Vrede en Lust (Peace and Passion) wine estate for a tasting.  We sat around a long table in a spacious hall overlooking the vineyards and the mountains beyond.  We were served a lovely board of meats, cheeses, and chutneys and tasted five different wines.  My favorite wine was the pinotage, a cross between the pinot noir and hermitage grapes that is a specialty of South Africa.  It was a fruity, full bodied wine and far superior, in my opinion, to the pinot noir which I often find thin and unsatisfying.

Meat and Cheese Board at Vrede en Lust

Terrace Overlooking the Vineyards at Vrede en Lust

Boschendal Winery

Tasting Under the Oak at Boschendal

After Vrede en Lust, we drove to Boschendal in the Franschhoek region.  The original Dutch settlers failed at wine making, so the Dutch East India Company imported French Hugenots to make wine.  They were settled at Franschhoek (or French Corner in Dutch.)  At Boschendal, we sat outside under a spreading oak tree and tasted another five wines plus a brandy.  The Dutch also brought oak trees to make wine barrels.  The trees grew well, but the lack of cold winter resulted in wood that was too porous to use for wine barrels.  Even today, the wine barrels used to make wine in South Africa are imported from France and North America.  Once again, the pinotage was my favorite of the wines we tasted, although I did like the brandy.

After Boschendal, we had a free hour-and-a-half in the village of Franschhoek.  We peeked into the Calvinist church, which had beautiful eucalyptus beams and a pine ceiling beneath what was originally a thatched roof, although it had been replaced with metal.  Franschhoek had only one main road and we browsed through the shops and I bought a couple of brightly colored ostrich feather dusters.  We weren’t really hungry but wanted to sit, so we bought some frozen yogurt and sat outside in a big sort of food court under the oak trees.  It was Mothers’ Day and lots of families were out enjoying the beautiful weather.

Calvinist Church in Franschhoek

Mother's Day in Franschhoek

Wine and Cheese Tasting at Fairview

Fairview Winery

The Vineyard at Fairview

At 2:30, we left Franschhoek and drove to the Paarl region where we visited the Fairview Winery.  There, each wine that we tasted was paired with a cheese from their cheese factory.  There was also a lovely chardonnay reduction in which to dip the cheeses.  I liked their chardonnay, but still preferred the pinotage.  

The woman conducting our tasting was also managing another group and we barely had time to finish before it was time to leave at 4:00.  A few members of our group wanted to buy wine and theservice was very slow.  As a result, we were quite late leaving. By the time we had driven back to Cape Town, it was too late to visit Table Mountain and the clouds had started rolling back in, anyway.  We were disappointed, but it was nice to have an hour to write before it was time to go to dinner.

Jan, Ramona, and I went with another three people from the wine tour to a famous restaurant called Gold.  The restaurant puts on a show of African singing and dancing and serves a set menu of various African foods.  

Gold Restaurant

The food in South Africa was heavily influenced by Malay and Indian cuisines and much of it was very spicy.  There were fish cakes, beans, corn bread, tomato soup, sweet potato fritters with sesame seeds, venison stew, spinach in peanut sauce, chicken, lamb filled phyllo cigars and many other dishes.  It was all I could do to take one bite of each thing.  Dessert was sugar cookies in the shape of African animals and I snuck mine into my purse for later. I couldn’t eat another bite.

Our Waitress at Gold

The Dancers Visiting Our Table

The dance troupe was entertaining and, after all the food was cooked and served, the kitchen staff joined in the singing and dancing.  They were athletic and enthusiastic.  Towards the end, the queen of the show dusted the patrons with gold powder.  They were quite theatrical.  It took quite a while to pay the check and call a taxi and the staff kept us entertained until we left.