Hitting the Road – South Africa

Hitting the Road
South Africa

Lizzy and I were dropped off at Adelaide airport by Lizzy’s parents. Not wanting to drag out the inevitable, they promptly took off for home and left Lizzy a blubbering mess. The nerve! Ah, you can’t blame them. It’s never easy to say ‘See ya later’ to a loved one that you don’t see very often. I felt the same way when I said my ‘good-byes’ to my family members.

I always love looking at the landscape as we fly over it and that day, we got a special treat. From Adelaide we flew over the centre of the country and if your geography is correct, you will remember that there is red monolith splat down in the middle of nowhere called ‘Ayers Rock’, preferably known by its aboriginal name, “Uluru”. I kid you not, it really does look like somebody took this red blob of mud and clay and from the heavens above, threw it down on the ground and there it stayed for millennia. It was an awesome sight to behold from above. Even at our altitude, the rock was gargantuan, no doubt emphasized by the surrounding seemingly flat ground. The surrounding territory is a vast sea of red, orange and white, the latter being trillions upon trillions of salt crystals. No trees. Just desert. From above, the wind activity makes it look like there once was a river, or a bed of water, that curled its way through the surrounding vastness. Like Tongariro park in New Zealand, perhaps here too, conspiracy theorists were inspired to spin their tales of fake Mars Rover landings and debunk other NASA claims.

We boarded the Singapore airlines airplane and I instantly found my favourite airline to travel with. In the back of every chair is a video consul and a removable wired control panel. With this you can watch any of the hundred or so movies that they offer with which you can operate as you would a VCR. That’s not all; you can watch music videos, news and play video games! It was all the entertainment that I needed to distract me from the drone of the engines jetting me on a twenty-one hour, sleepless flight to Cape Town. But what really took the cake was the fact that they had ICE CREAM for dessert! Now that is an airline with high standards. If you ever get a chance to fly with them, I highly recommend it. At the opposite of the spectrum lies Air Canada. Avoid flying with them if you can help it. You ask for water and they tell you to fill up in the bathroom. Sheesh! Only after exhausting all other possibilities, twice, then maybe you can take Air Canada but boy oh boy, I don’t envy you. Hopefully you’ll have a good experience!

After a seven-hour lay over in Singapore, we were off to Jo’berg. While waiting for the plane to refuel and change passengers in Jo’berg, we looked out the window and we saw a small black bird with a really long and seemingly chiffon-like tail. Our first encounter with African wildlife!

After picking up our bags in Cape Town, I decided to make sure that there wasn’t any funny business going on with my bag and checked all pockets to see if anything was missing or if anything had been added before going through customs. While doing this I noticed that the laundry detergent that I had packed away had burst from the plastic bag that I had stored it in and was falling onto the ground. Deciding not to look alarmed or make it look like I was hiding something, I casually got out another zip lock bag and started to clean up the mess. Lizzy tells me that all the security guards had more than a passing interest as they all kept a keen on eye on this red-faced Canadian meticulously picking up white powder off the floor. We exchanged our money and made our way towards the masses waiting outside. Oddly enough, there was no one there at customs to look at our stuff or take our cards. Go figure.

Finding transport into the city centre was a bit of a challenge. Identifying the hawkers looking to make a good, quick buck on an unsuspecting tourist was easy to do, but they sort of set the market level a bit high. Anyway, we managed to get a relatively cheap backpackers bus into town and were promptly dropped off on Long Street, notorious for loud parties and late night reveling. We were so shagged from flying; we didn’t even register the thumping bar across the street from our balcony. We slept for about 15 hours!

I think the biggest culture shock for me thus far is the emphasis on personal security. I have no doubt that crime can and is, sensationalized in the media abroad but the local people here like to say that it really isn’t that bad. I disagree. I have never been in a place where I have to be ‘buzzed in’ through a steel gate just to get into a bakery. There are loads of security guards walking around the premises of their assigned location and everywhere you go, there is an “Armed Response” sign to be seen posted on walls of homes and businesses alike. In the big city, your average house in your average to above average suburb has a wall lined with barbed wire, electrified fence and/or spikes. Barking dogs patrolling the premises are a common sight. Homes also have those electronic buzz you in type doors. People tell you, ‘don’t go there, don’t do this, don’t take that transport, don’t go at that time of night’ etc. etc. So, you can understand when we arrived that our radars were extra sensitive and we chilled out for a couple days getting used to the area and vibe. We took in some of the local sights like museums and the V & A Waterfront. I think the person who designs those waterfronts must be rich but lacks creativity. Either that or copycat contractors and architects all have the same generic idea of what can be seen or done on a waterfront. I say this because the waterfront in Cape Town looks like the waterfront in Calgary, and the waterfront in Sydney, and the waterfront in Adelaide etc. etc.

Cape Town really is beautiful. It has its European look to it with an African injection into the city’s vibe. We went to Robben Island, the place where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years. The tour was interesting though I was a little disappointed with the outcome. We could see the whole facility, grounds and learn a little about the history of the place but in the end, I felt like I had just another tour of a jail. Sure, we got to see Nelson Mandela’s cell, which pretty much looked like any other cell but there was something missing from this tour. It took Lizzy and I a couple of hours of reflection afterwards to figure it out. They had this captive audience in front of them and they never really told us what it meant to be a political prisoner, how one gets to be a political prisoner, what archaic rules did they have to break, if any, in order to be thrown in prison. What were they fighting for? Why was it so important? Though I knew some of the answers, I thought that they would delve into that area a lot more.

You can take a boat from the waterfront over to the island, which makes for a nice trip in itself because as you are leaving the shore, you have the city dwarfed by Table Mountain as a huge backdrop. It makes for some stunning photo opportunities.

We also were lucky to have one of our SA colleagues from Korea University recommend us to call a friend of hers which proved to be a good idea as she was very helpful, friendly and entertaining. They took us up Signal Hill to watch a beautiful sun set over the water. It’s one of many good places to do it.

Slowly but surely we gained our confidence and set about exploring the surrounding areas. We moved over to Observatory, a trendy little suburb in Cape Town, to a backpackers called The Green Elephant. It was a bit expensive but had all you needed, save for a bank machine. In some backpackers you can have dorm rooms, double rooms (refers to number of beds in one room and mattress size respectively), kitchen, TV, lounge, BBQ area (braai in SA terms), toilets (of course), pool, washer, and internet, not to mention a relaxing but groovey atmosphere and very helpful staff. In others, you have less. I find backpackers really allow you to be independent, if you want to be, and seem to be more in tune with travelers needs and wants.

On our second to last day there, we finally tackled Table Mountain. Like its name, the top is almost completely flat but what a view! I won’t say it is breathtaking because I find that is an overused word in the marketing industry, but it’s certainly worth the effort to don the hiking boots, load up on water, slop on the sunscreen and slap on a hat. We took a black taxi into the center of town to catch a connecting bus up to the mountain. We’ve been told not to take these but they seemed all right. You just have to put up with the boom box blaring, possibly being crammed into a slot where you thought you only could stick your hand or a quarter of a buttock into and, haggling for a decent price. The latter of which is really important, otherwise you’ll be taken to the cleaners. From town central minibus station to the Table Mountain trailhead, it can take between five and eight minutes to drive there, which requires you to pay about 10 Rand. Normally it’s less for that distance but I think because it’s up to Table Mountain, they charge you more. Anyway, once our friendly, mild mannered bus driver and his travelling solicitor/heckler had established that we were foreigners, they offered to take us to Table Mountain for a good price. 200 Rand! Perfectly in tune to the bible sermon being preached on the radio. My word! After we had brushed off those amateurs, with a little walking, stubbornness and some haggling we made it to the trailhead via the town centre again!

Lizzy and I gathered the necessary information regarding hiking up the mountain (which amounted to a lot of don’ts) and started along the winding track along the base of the mountain. Even from there you have a nice view of the city. Nevertheless, we decided that it was insufficient and snaked our way up the seemingly endless switchbacks to the top. I say ‘seemingly’ because Lizzy doubted if there ever was a ‘top’ to the mountain and not some dirty trick played by Capetownians on unsuspecting tourists. I really enjoyed the hike as did Lizzy when she got to the top. There are beautiful low alpine flowers and plants that would make any botanist happy and the scenery from up top is fabulous, if there aren’t any clouds going by. Quite often Table Mountain has a quick weather change (or a quick scene change as the curtain clouds descends upon you) and you can’t see a thing. We were lucky that day to see as far as the horizon on all sides. It’s a wonderful place for a picnic and a snooze. Afterwards we rewarded ourselves with a revolving cable car ride down the mountain to the tune of an amusingly bored and sarcastic cable car operator. Much to our operators’ chagrin perhaps, the cable didn’t snap and we didn’t plunge into the depths below. We had arrived safely at the bottom.

We walked down the mountain to the nearest busy intersection and waited for a Rikkis bus to town. You pay a little more but they are safe and reliable. I recommend using them.