Days 85 thru 87

(Rhia’s comments are italicized)

Since arriving in South Africa, our ultimate goal was to get to Cape Town. We have traveled the last 400 km through more wonderful landscapes, beautiful villages, and, sadly, past more shantytowns. S Africa is definitely stunningly beautiful and the agriculture is impressive. During this part of the journey, we passed through hundreds of kilometers of rapeseed (what Canola is made from) and that made for some beautiful colors in the landscape.

The shantytowns, however, were a different story! One’s brain has a hard time making sense of such poverty bang in the middle of stunning landscapes! And even in the midst of poverty (where toilets were a row of the porta-potties that must have stunk to high heaven, especially in the summer) it seemed that everyone had a TV and a cell phone!

We arrived at our rental stay right on Queen’s Beach in Sea Point and were thrilled to learn that we ARE as close to the sea as we were hoping! This means we can open our bedroom window and fall asleep to the crashing waves once again.

If you remove Table Mountain from Cape Town, you would have the equivalent of San Diego. I totally understand now why Cape Town is considered the San Diego of Africa! So far, that would include the cold, rainy days, also. But, as it’s winter here in the southern hemisphere, I’m not complaining. I love being able to sit on our balcony and take photos. The day we arrived we had a stunning sunset…

I think I’ve found my calling…sitting on a balcony relaxing and taking a photo every so often. A girl could get used to this life!!

Our first task in Cape Town was to exchange money, after having failed twice on our way here…banks don’t necessarily change money; this is true even for those banks that advertise that they change money 😂 And, oddly, banks that advertise and that actually do change money seem to only do so during allotted times (and we just happened to be outside of that window!)  Huh!? We were directed to a 24 hour ‘Bureau de Change’ at the V&A Waterfront. If you are from the UK, you would assume that the V and A would stand for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert Waterfront…and you would be wrong. 😂 What Dan’s trying to say in a roundabout way is that I assumed it to be Victoria and Albert and that I was wrong 😂 The A if for Alfred, Queen Victoria’s second son!! It was quite funny to see Rhia trying to wrap her head around the Alfred thing for a good 20 minutes before she looked it up. Okay, so Dan was trying to persuade me that I was a victim to the Mandela Effect; but I knew that Victoria’s husband was Albert! I knew she had a son called Alfred but couldn’t quite understand why this was named for mother and son rather than wife and husband 🥴 The Waterfront is quite touristy and is full of shopping malls, restaurants, piers, landmarks, museums, and entertainment venues. I think we both agree that the East African Market building was our favorite. Not only is it an old building, but also it was like a museum with everything for sale from all over Africa!

The performers that can be found all around this area are extremely talented. Unemployment rate is 25% in Cape Town so it’s great to see people doing something to make money rather than relying on begging!

For the first time on our entire trip, we are having to plan around the weather. A winter storm blew in, so we spent a day visiting two museums. The first was the Iziko South African Museum. Its focus is on the natural history of South Africa. There were lots of bones, fossils, and animals, both plastic models and taxidermist stuffed.

Also contained in this museum was an exhibit about culture and heritage. They did a great job of highlighting the fact that race does not make us different, but our culture identity does.

We visited the District Six Museum next, just as the rain really started to fall. I think the museum is already a must see for tourists, but the rain kept everyone inside, so it was packed! This museum is a converted Methodist church in the former District Six of Cape Town. It now serves as a memorial to the forced movement (eviction) of 60,000 black/colored inhabitants in District Six during Apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s. People whose families had lived in a house for generations were forced to move when this district was earmarked for white government workers. They razed all the houses, this displacing people not only physically but also emotionally/culturally!

Though the rain continued into the night, it had stopped by morning, but just left it cold and windy, so we went back to V & A Waterfront again to go back into the African Market, tour around, and eat lunch.

Our final memory of that wharf will be the haunting singing of a woman with a guitar and a very loud speaker! I couldn’t leave fast enough, so no pictures, sorry.

Cape Town is certainly beautiful, and the next couple days looks to be clear and warmer, so we hope to take advantage of that.

I’ll end the post with this photo. I was a bit confused as to what the lady was doing as she seemed to be brushing the grass along the seafront. I wondered why but then remembered that Dan tried to vacuum our artificial grass (before we knew better) and so I figured it’s just something some people do! But FYI vacuuming artificial grass is a very bad idea as it overheats the vacuum and burns out the fan belt in a hurry!