Thursday, January 28, 2010

Observatory, observant

Observatory

Our accommodation for most of our time in Cape Town was the suburb of Observatory, fifteen minutes from the city. It's a decidedly bohemian neighborhood and the only place we found in the city where the locals wear shorts. (I feel that most of how I look, being in Africa and all, is pretty much at odds with the locals, so at least in that small regard I was able to fit in.)

Me one hundred percent not fitting in

Backpacking in South Africa is a popular industry, and the network of hostels in the country is astounding – there were at least three in Observatory alone, all within a four-block radius. Yet outside the town's main street we barely saw any young-person travelers like ourselves.

Hostel relaxing

In all our train trips to and from the city and down the peninsula we didn't see a single person who didn't look like they were going to work, and it was strange– I don't know where all the people go (or whether they go anywhere at all).

Observatory train station (the clean end)

The food is splendidly cheap so far. We ate out almost every day in the city, spending (honestly) fast-food prices for high-quality meals. Our most expensive dinner out included an appetizer, two mains, two desserts, bottled water and a bottle of wine for $35 each, including tip. And this was a classy establishment with a clientele twice our age.


Anniversary Dinner...

Bottles of beer are $2.50 max, though there seems to be a bit of monopoly on beer and not much selection from place to place. Many have maize (Africa corn) in them. Eateries and bars, as with most of the neighborhoods we explored, seem to be pretty segregated. Even on Long Street, where things are fairly evenly mixed on the sidewalk, we ended up eating (whether intentional or not) surrounded by all white people most of the time.

One disappointment so far is the juice. The two of us being somewhat of fruit-juice aficionados and considering the tropical climate and all, we were anticipating a high-quality selection– and selection there is, with multiple fridge displays per supermarket displaying various exotic flavours, including papaya, grenadilla and lychee & pear. But most that we've tasted so far are diluted, oversweetened, and mostly grape or apple juice, regardless of the flavour on the label. Even the 'lite' juices are artificially sweetened to the point where they sting one's tongue. Same deal with produce: I'm convinced the people who live here buy their fresh fruits and veggies at some super-secret locals' market and leave the wrinkly stuff for the clueless like ourselves.

Anniversary breakfast (and the only juice photo I have)

So far, Africans are terrific litterers. On our first train-ride home from Cape Town I sat across from a moody guy my age who stuffed a handful of trash out the train window as it sat in the station. I figured him a badass for so boldly neglecting the environment – what with endangered species mere kilometers away – only to observe not two minutes later a clean-cut father essentially teaching his young daughter the same method of disposing of her popsicle wrapper. Not helping the situation are the armies of poor-looking folk hawking soda and mini bags of chips from train-car to train-car. Even since Cape Town, in the mostly-white towns, the attractive whitewashed old Dutch buildings create an illusion of cleanliness while the filthy parks and ditches tell a different story.


Deceiving clean building

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Cape Town in Review

Table Mountain, And Cape Town below, as seen from Robben Island

A few days ago we left Cape Town for good after a little over a week of exploring the city and its surroundings. It was a swell time for sure, and I feel we were the busiest we'll be for the majority of the trip—we hit all the major tourist pulls, a few less significant ones, and did a lot of exploring on our own. I can say with confidence we got a fair and comprehensive impression of the city.

Cape Town is nestled rather spectacularly into the base of Table Mountain, an imposing, flat-topped hunk of millenna-old rock (six times the age of the Himalayas, it is believed). South of the city extends the Cape Peninsula, at the end of which sits the most south-western point in Africa, the Cape of Good Hope. (One would think the most southern point in Africa—Cape Agulhas—would be the cause of more excitement, but apparently not.) The city began as a recharging station established by the Dutch East India Trading Company, an institution akin to a pro-slavery, musket-happy Hudson's Bay Company. The DEITC's influence is widespread and profound, including the instantly recognizable Cape Dutch style of architecture, the widely-spoken (though somewhat inelegant) Afrikaans, and the nation's love of all things sausage. The Brits arrived sometime later, spawning a whole other set of descendants who in turn threw their own habits into the cultural mishmash. Not to mention all the indigenous tribes who were obviously here first. And there are also many Muslims. SA has nine official languages, only one of which I can pronounce correctly.

Rhodes memorial, overlooking the University of Cape Town

One can't mention South Africa's past without bringing up Cecil John Rhodes, for whom, it seems, white South Africans have a huge éréction. A multi-multi-millionnaire and a righteous imperialist, Cecil seems to have owned most of southern Africa in the late 1800s, even going so far as to name two countries after himself (Northern and Southern Rhodesia, which today make up Zambia and Zimbabwe, respectively). Striking it rich in the Kimberly diamond mines, Rhodes founded DeBeers, which at its peak accounted for 90 per cent of the world's diamond production. At various points in his life, he sat as prime minister of the Cape Colony, founded the University of Cape Town (the oldest in southern Africa) and created the Rhodes Scholar program partnered with Oxford University. You can't go far in Cape Town without seeing a tribute to Cecil and his (now controversial) vision of Africa.


The Bo-Kaap

The downtown core, though not exactly beautiful, has a ragged hustle and bustle that Canadian cities simply don't achieve. We spent a lot of time (and most of our restaurant budget) on Long Street, where upmarket boutiques and eateries mingle with two-century-old mosques and bathhouses, and well-heeled trendsetters mix with shoeless children. Three blocks away sit the rows of squat pastel homes that make up the Bo-Kaap neighbourhood, a tight-knit community descended from Muslim slaves. Beyond that, further down the coast, sit a series of upper-class enclaves where whitewashed beach condos descend sheer cliffs to the windy, white-sand beaches below.


Even if the city buildings aren't pretty (though a few of them are), Cape Town is unabashedly photogenic, thanks to the backdrop of the iconic Table Mountain and the adjoining Devil's Peak and Lion's Head. Given the choice between a strenuous three hour hike up the mountain and a quick and painless ascent in a gondola, we chose the latter.


Once at the 1,000m summit, the Table's surface, though rugged, is just as flat as it appears from below, and host to a variety of flora and fauna. We came across a family of dassies – cousin to the elephant, though really more reminiscent of an oversized guinea pig – and a generous scattering of lizards. And the rocks seem so old! Not a jagged edge in sight, making our Rockies seem infantile.

A dozen or so kilometers from Table Mountain, Robben Island's barren landscape and eerie silence stand in stark contrast to the natural beauty and vibrant goings-on of the city. A leper colony, institution for the mentally handicapped, and most notably a maximum security prison that housed resisters of apartheid, Robben Island lives up to its monicker of 'Exile Island'. Once off the boat, we were given a bus tour of the island by a young man named Kent, who supplied a prodigious amount of information about the island and its former purposes. It is from the sandstone quarry where the likes of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu laboured for years that the Cape Town harbour is most visible. Afterwards we were met by a former inmate, in our case a man named Sparks who'd been convicted of 'recruitment' and 'terrorism' in the 1980's. He gave tour of the prison, including the cell block in which he spent seven years, and told stories of an activist's life behind bars.


He, along with many other ex-political prisoners, has fully reconciled with his captors and those who supported the oppressive regime that put him there in the first place. Rather than viewing the island as a reminder of a dark period in his life and South Africa's history, he sees it as a symbol of the resilience and freedom of his people. On the island we also saw African penguins, which to us are a symbol of awesomeness.

Useful plants garden, Kirstenbosch

Cape Town is the only place on Earth where you can see one UNESCO World Heritage Site from another, the first being Robben Island and the second being Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. Situated on land donated by (you know it) Cecil Rhodes, Kirstenbosch is the first botanical gardens to showcase exclusively indigenous plants.


This is made all the more exceptional knowing the Cape Peninsula and area alone makes up one of seven unique floral kingdoms in the world. (To put this in perspective, another kingdom is the Boreal Kingdom, which consists of all of Canada, Most of Europe, and Russia). The pride and joy of this unique kingdom (and of the Cape Tourism Board) is Fynbos, meaning 'fine bush', a family of plants unique to the Cape and covering much of its land. Species of Fynbos vary from fine groundcover to shoulder-height bushes to the King Protea, which features a stiff, spiny bloom, and is SA's national flower.

Camps Bay beach, Signal Hill in the background

Cape Town defied our expectations of what an African city could be, and more than once we remarked that we could see ourselves living here. Given Cape Town's numerous draws, we were a little surprised by how few tourists we encountered, but less surprised by those we did encounter who were happy to be carted from attraction to attraction, making little effort to get a real sense of the city's rhythm. Perhaps this wariness is to be expected in a city that employs more security guards and public safety officials than bus drivers or mail people. Our experience was profoundly positive and we would recommend Cape Town with confidence.

Written by Scott & Alanna

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Kaapstad: The First 24 Hours

Our trip to Cape Town went surprisingly smoothly. Our flights departed and arrived more or less on time, both our bags and their contents made it to their destination intact, and Gino (our cab driver) greeted us at the airport with this sign:

I had expected something to go wrong – a missed connection, a lost backpack, a cracked seat-back screen, but nothing did. Nothing that made us so much as sigh at our misfortune or sarcastically remark, “This is Africa” – nothing that put our mettle to the test.

As we drove into the city, the freeway cut through the Cape Flats – the endless cardboard and corrugated metal townships that sprawl out from the city centre – we noticed that although some of these were as decrepit and impoverished as we had imagined, others seemed less so, with cars parked in driveways beside small, sturdy looking homes made of brick. The financial divide was not as stark as we had anticipated.

We arrived at our hostel, a pleasant building with an almost heritage-y feel from the inside and a vaguely Mediterranean feel from the outside, at half past midnight. With one final waft of greasy hair and unwashed bodies we both fell asleep, only to find ourselves wide awake four hours later.

The next morning we arrived in the city and found ourselves somewhat unprepared, with no real map or destination or plan of attack. We'd taken the commuter train in from the suburb of Observatory, where the hostel is, a fifteen-minute ride for which a return ticket costs just under a dollar fifty. Our first introduction to Cape Town were the minibusses jumbled outside the station – a gaggle of privately-owned quasi-taxis piloted by young men touting what we assumed to be various destinations, jamming as many passengers as possible into their vans, and driving about with little regard for other vehicles or pedestrians. (Which, by the way, are provided only about five seconds to cross any street, making jaywalking inevitable.)

We eventually made our way to the decidedly more tourist-centric (and crosswalk-friendly) Waterfront area, which is characterized by a mix of authentic and inauthentic Victorian architecture, restaurants and a plethora of jewelery retailers. While not the type of place we wanted to hang around for too long, it did provide us with a chance to shamelessly pull out our guidebook and get a feel for where we next wanted to go, which ended up being a 17th century castle.

For R25 (about $3.50) we were given access to three museums and were permitted to explore most areas of the castle at our leisure. The few areas that we did not have access to, we were able to see on a short guided tour that gave insight into the castle's various functions over the years (namely, torture, detainment and punishment). The castle still houses a division of the South African army and we showed up just in time to witness the changing of the guard and the discharging of a very tiny canon. The castle also features the oldest bell in Africa!

In keeping with our European theme, we picked up a baguette and some Brie on the way back to our hostel and enjoyed it on the patio before retiring for an afternoon nap, which became a 12-hour sleep until 4am the next day. At least we saved money on dinner!

With blistered feet and sunburned skin, we eagerly await day two.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Prep

With all of Alanna's educational preamble, I thought I'd shed some light on what I've been doing to prepare for the big trip:


Saving Money

Since maybe the tenth grade I've been using a whiskey tube as a piggy bank, dropping a coin or two in whenever I've had some to spare. It got heavy, and in lieu of lugging it back to Victoria when we moved out, I popped it open:


Just shy of 180 bucks! not shabby.


Protecting Our Belongings

As a Christmas gift I sewed Alanna a fabric laptop case from an old sports coat. If Fagin owned a Dell, he'd be proud. Behold:



Familiarizing With Local Culture

Mainly via this link : Awesome Tapes From Africa, provided by a pal named Cody.

As far as I can tell it's a Brooklyn guy who seeks out cassettes of obscure musicians from all over Africa and makes them available on the interweb. There is a ton of stuff on here, just browsing the covers is worthwhile. I think my favourite of what I've heard is Karamoko Keita. I know everyone says the Blues originated in Africa, but a reminder every once in a while doesn't hurt.

For your dance parties, I preemptively request Ata Kak.


...And we're all ready to go! That's how it's done, folks.

Friday, January 8, 2010

FOUR Things Alanna is Excited For

(Because he inspires me.... and because our relationship is sustained by friendly competition)

1. Being very, very bad vegetarians.
2. Babies. I've heard that it's common for mothers to plunk their children in the laps of strangers on cramped 16-hour minibus rides across the desert -- nothing could appeal to me more.
3. Improving my already stellar Swahili (ex. "Naweza kupata biya ndizi rafiki wa kiume mzungu wapi?" means "Where can I find banana beer for my white boyfriend?")
4. Serenading my white boyfriend with this song when I discover that despite all my research, I have booked our beach resort vacation-from-our-vacation right in the middle of what is called 'the long rains'.



Also, FOUR MORE SLEEPS.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

The Things They Carried

We booked our flights in August. We got out vaccinations in November. Last week, we crammed our belongings into Scott’s parents’ truck and handed over the keys to our apartment. None of it felt real until today, sitting on my bedroom floor, surrounded by small stacks of clothing, film canisters filled with medications, a travel towel of dubious absorbency. They are the only familiar things I’ll have for the next six months -- no home made dinners, no weekend paper, no iMac, no 20-minute hot showers, no jeans.

My approach to packing was simple: seek out other people’s lists, highlight good ideas, toss out bad ones (like ‘wristband wallet’ and ‘ridiculously overzealous med kit’). After all the fun I had writing my three-part series on budgeting advice, I’m almost tempted to give a blow-by-blow of the final packing list, but I think it’s best I refrain. Most of the clothes I’m packing came from the Gap end-of-summer sale or a free box in Victoria. Most of my other travel implements came wrapped in holiday paper and as far as I know, came from the North Pole in a sleigh. None of this is particularly helpful.

The one thing I will endorse here is the same thing everyone who’s ever done any backpacking will tell you: pack light. I think this becomes all the more important the less developed the countries you are visiting are, and the more you want to move around them. Given that we’re headed for sub-Saharan Africa, and plan to be on the move more days than not, it’s vital to our shoulders and our sanity that we keep the size and weight of our packs down.

Initially, we’d hoped to have only carry-on, but after the underwear bomber incident and ensuing (bat shit crazy) security policy review, it seems unlikely that we’ll be living out that particular dream. Meaning, at 11:30pm Cape Town time a week from now, you’ll find me buzzing around the carousel, praying aloud with my boyfriend that an opportunistic baggage handler didn’t slice through our nylon packs and steal my rainbow button-up from 1980 or his ratty grey hoodie.

Perhaps it will turn out to be a good thing that our packing list in no way reminiscent of an REI shopping spree -- no one’s going to want to steal our stuff, and if it weren't for the freckles and blonde hair, we just might succeed in blending in with the locals sporting their second-hand t-shirts.


Friday, January 1, 2010

Three Things Scott is Excited For

  1. Savoury banana dishes
  2. Banana Beer
  3. Seeing where they filmed Lion King