Cape Town, South Africa

We went to Africa to see

the dramatic landscapes,

Table Mountain, Victoria Falls,

the Cape of Good Hope.

And the animals of course,

what people call the Big Five:

Elephant, Lion, Leopard,

Rhino, and Water Buffalo.

What struck deeper, however,

all the way to the heart,

were the people who shared

and taught us about that

landscape, those creatures,

their culture, dark history,

and personal stories.

Buford, our Cape Town guide

took us up the aerial tram that

ascends Table Mountain.

It’s now officially designated

as one of the Seven Natural

Wonders of the World.

Whoever decides that,

I don’t know. It’s well deserved.

And it’s presence looms

over every part of Cape Town.

If you don’t see it, just turn

around and it’s there.

Some places, are particularly

well-suited for views of the southern

Atlantic Ocean below, like the area

that was designated District 6

by the Group Areas Act of 1950.

In 1966, the operation began

to make it a whites-only area.

The apartheid laws classified people

by race: White, Black, Colored (mixed race),

and Asian. Buford described himself as Colored.

When assigning people to a category,

the authorities might make measurements

of noses, eyes, mouth, even penises.

The black and colored residents of District 6

began to be forcibly removed, often

with only whatever possessions

that could fit in their suitcases.

By 1982, 60,000 people had been

relocated and their homes

had been bulldozed to rubble.

Much of the land is still vacant, with

overgrown rubble and a few improvised

shelters crouching on the slopes below

white stucco, red-tile roofed villas

that would not be out of place

in Santa Monica or Malibu.

Then Buford took us to a cafe named Truth,

which claims to serve the best coffee

in the world. Not an unreasonable claim.

It was magnificent and the patrons

were a multitude of ethnicities.

Segregation now is of the modern

variety -do you have enough money

to hang out in an upscale cafe?

The next day was the day to go down

the peninsula to the Cape of Good Hope.

With points of interest along the way.

First stop was Camps Bay, an enclave

of beautiful homes perched on the slopes

below the backside of Table Mountain.

With a long white sand beach.

Thirty five years ago it was not only the sand

that was white. We parked at the adjacent

public beach, named Maiden’s Beach.

Not called that because of some fair maiden,

but because it was the boulder strewn

beach where the domestic housemaids

were allowed to swim.

The coast road high above Haut Bay

is spectacular. At Noordhoek, we stopped

for coffee at place where some of the many

horse-owning set that live in this area,

ride their horses up to a takeout window

at The Coffee Guy’s Cafe.

Farther and farther along the headlands,

a treeless landscape with pink flowering

sugarbushes, windy and cool, it’s not where

I’d expect to see ostriches and kudu antelope.

But we do. At the far point of the Cape,

dozens of visitors wait patiently to take

a photograph of themselves standing behind

the sign that declares Cape of Good Hope.

A short ride on the Flying Dutchman funicular

took us up to original Cape Point lighthouse

that was replaced after too many shipwrecks

-like the Portuguese ocean liner Lusitania in 1911.

It’s up too high on the headlands and

is often shrouded in fog. We were so ready

to go to the place that we most wanted to visit

on the Cape: the African penguin colony

at Boulder Beach in Simon’s Town.

A wide wooden boardwalk thronged

with penguin watchers keeps the crowds

away from the penguins. Some sprawled

on their bellies in the sand, some waddled 

up the dunes to their burrows. Hundreds

of people come to see them every day,

the town is festooned with penguin

themed signs and souvenirs.

Buford says a lot of the people who live

here are not so sanguine about penguins,

-they dig burrows in their gardens

and their feces is unpleasantly fishy.

They try keep them out with low fences.

Walled residences of various sorts

to exclude various creatures and

various people seem to be everywhere

in South Africa. But we were welcomed.

The people are warmer than the weather.