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.
