Cape Town

Our South Africa trip was based around a safari that our friends Haley and David had found and invited us to book with them. Jason and I decided to add on some time in Cape Town before going to the lodge as well, and we ended up spending a day and a half in Johannesburg too. Overall, we took almost two weeks for the trip, which is the minimum I think I’d book to justify the 30+ hour travel days to get all the way across the world (South Africa is close to the antipode of Washington state). 

I had always heard great things about Cape Town, and we were excited to spend some time there. The city has endless things to do, from outdoor activities to museums, and I was frustrated trying to prioritize what we wanted to do in our four days there.

Our first activity after arriving in Cape Town was to go on a free walking tour, which is always a good way to get some context from a local. Our walking tour was historical, and our guide took us through some of the important points of the city center. We took the tour about an hour after arriving in the city and are very glad we challenged ourselves to explore a bit before jet lag set in.

The area was originally inhabited by a few tribes, including the Khoikoi, San, and Xhosa people. The first western “discovery” of Cape Town was by the Portuguese, who sailed by in the late 1400s but never established a long-term presence in the area. The first colonization began in the mid 1600s, when the Dutch decided to establish a settlement to support ships traveling to the Dutch East Indies. Unable to find enough labor locally, they began to import slaves from other areas of Africa, as well as Indonesia, which began the cultural melting pot of the city, as well as the introduction of the “Cape Colored” racial group. The British eventually also saw the value of the Cape and, through various complicated war efforts, fought for control of the city throughout the 1800s; they eventually unified South Africa in the early 1900s.

In 1948, the National Party won on a platform of institutionalized racial segregation, or apartheid. Previously racially integrated, Cape Town, as well as the other cities in South Africa, subjected Black citizens to forced relocation to townships. While apartheid was finally repealed in 1991, racism and government corruption are still everywhere. South Africa has an unemployment rate of 40%, and there are hundreds of thousands living without electricity, clean water, and proper sanitation. As a tourist, there are large areas of the cities that we were advised not to visit based on high crime rates. The wealthy areas of the city are very white, even though white people make up only 16% of the population, and the inequality is still painfully evident. The history in this area is winding, not always well reported, and generally hard to wrap one’s head around; we had difficulty finding more detailed information to link to, but this article does as well as anything we saw online (we do want to note that the article stops at 1948 and the history most certainly does not). The history of this city, region, and country is complex and learning to understand it a bit more by visiting was rewarding though also often painful.

Okay, stepping away from the history. Cape Town is incredible. It’s gorgeous, with mountains to the south and ocean to the west. Dramatic clouds often pour over Table Mountain like a blanket, inspiring a legend of the devil having a smoking contest with a pirate. The city has incredible food, with influences from Indian, Malaysian, and African cuisine, and there’s also a lot of great coffee. Nearly everyone we met was kind and happy to talk to us about what we were enjoying on our trip, and they’re obviously all so proud of the beautiful city they call home.

One night in Cape Town we had reservations at a speakeasy, which has truly become a major American export. They were serious - we didn’t find out the location until last minute and had to provide a code to a skeptical doorman - but once we were inside we were greeted by a warm, friendly set of employees and a three-piece band singing covers of pop and rock songs. It was really fun, and the decor was pretty great as well.

We took one day to drive out to the Cape of Good Hope, seeing some sights along the way. We first visited Muizenberg, which is a classic surfing town with iconic brightly colored changing shacks on False Bay. It’s very cute, and fun to watch the surfers. From there, we drove south along the water, stopping for lunch in Simon’s Town, where we ate fish and chips with a lovely view of the water. Our next stop, and one of our most anticipated, was Boulders Beach, where we got to see the penguin colony there. These are African Chinstrap penguins, and they only live in South Africa. They’re really adorable, and there were even some fluffy chicks. In addition, Boulders is an absolutely beautiful beach, and we also saw some dassies, which I loved. It was lovely all around.

From Boulders Beach we drove all the way south to the Cape of Good Hope. Along the way, we saw a lot of signs telling us to beware the baboons, which was a bit alarming since we hadn’t realized they lived in the area. We didn’t see any, but there were lots of signs telling us not to feed them.

The cape is a national park, and on our way in we were surprised to see ostriches roaming around - we had both thought they were native to Australia for some reason, but they’re actually from South Africa. It was cool to suddenly see them in the wild. We drove to the most southwest place in Africa and climbed to the top of the hill, where there were great views across False Bay and into the water below.

We also went to the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, which is absolutely amazing. It’s a huge piece of donated property that reaches up the backside of Table Mountain (you can technically hike to the top of Table Mountain from the garden), and it’s been really well cultivated and taken care of. We spent a couple of hours strolling through the gardens and eating lunch at the on-site restaurant, which was surprisingly good. It’s one of our favorite botanical gardens, and we’ve been to a lot.

We heard from a lot of people that going up Table Mountain while we were in town was a must. You can hike up, which takes a few hours, or there’s a cable car that only takes a few minutes. A lot of people hike up and take the cable car down, but as I was still having trouble sleeping and generally struggling a bit, we decided to just take the cable car both ways.

Aside from the spectacular views in every direction, Table Mountain is special because it’s a biodiversity hotspot for flora, with hundreds of endemic species. The top, which is a large flat area with lots of hiking trails, is rocky and covered in small plants, shrubs, and short trees. It’s beautiful in a very stark way, like many of the more extreme climates we’ve visited. 

The cable car is very cool - the bottom spins slowly as it moves, so no matter what side of the car you’re on, you can see the views from every direction during the ride. We’ve never seen that before, but it’s a great idea. As we arrived at the top, the operator welcomed us to the “ice box” and told us the last ride time down.

Generally, all the locals we met in South Africa were very sensitive to the cold, but the real thing that made the top of Table Mountain cold was the intense wind. I wore a sweatshirt plus a windbreaker, with the hood up, for most of the time - it ended up being the perfect layering for the weather.

We took the cable car up in the late afternoon, which was a choice we felt very good about because there was almost no one else up there. When we started hiking around the top, we were often totally alone. As the sun dropped lower in the sky, we also got beautiful glowing views of the city and beaches below us.

On our last day in the area we took a day trip to the wine areas outside of the city - Stellenbosch, Paarl, and Franschhoek.

For the entire trip, we marveled at the absence of other American tourists, and our day tours were no exception. On this one, there were two other people from the United States, but there was also a couple from Finland, another from Switzerland, two sisters from Botswana, and one person from Nigeria. It was interesting to talk to everyone and hear what questions everyone had for each other - we got into a long conversation about the crisis of American healthcare with the Finns.

We also went to three beautiful old wineries - La Bri, where we had a chocolate and wine pairing; Boschendal, where we tried to make everyone tell us what they call the game cornhole in their country (no one else had a local name for it); and Fairview, where we had a wine pairing with cow and goat cheese.

Our guide, Nelson, was a Cape Town local who taught us a lot about the history of the area. On our way back to the city, he talked about the townships and pointed out where he had grown up. It was a very sobering and important end to a very bougie day of fancy wine and food.

Cape Town was absolutely wonderful, and we loved our time there. I want to go back for a week and do all the things we didn’t get a chance to do - climbing Lion’s Head, visiting more of the peaks and beaches, and going to the museums that we didn’t have time to visit. There were also so many more restaurants I wanted to try. We were sad to leave but excited for the rest of our trip.

Johannesburg

This blog is a little different because it’s not chronological - I wanted to pair our the first part of our trip in Cape Town with the last part in Johannesburg so that the safari would get its own blog. So, please time travel with me as I tell you more about the city we visited at the end of our trip. We flew into Joburg before heading out to the safari, and then after the safari we flew back to the city for a day before heading back to Seattle.

Johannesburg was difficult for me. It’s massive, with more than 5 million people in the city and 10 million in the metro area, and so much of that population lives in abject poverty. We stayed in one of the fancy tourist areas, which was essentially a completely walled-in outdoor mall with three Marriott hotels, lots of restaurants and high-end shops, a supercar dealership, and an armored car dealership. Access was strictly controlled, especially at night, so that we could feel safe walking between the buildings. It did feel safe, but also incredibly isolated from the rest of the city.

Throughout our time in South Africa we learned about load shedding, which impacts the entire country. Essentially, the power system has collapsed, and there are rotating power outages every day, with the government designating a phase that dictates how many hours a day the power is out. While we were there, the country was in phase 8, which means that the power was turned off for 4 hours in the morning, 4 in the afternoon, and an additional couple of hours overnight. The rest of the time, everyone uses generators or other alternate power if they can afford it, but a lot of people just don’t have power. There’s been a high impact on small businesses, many of which had to shut down, and there are constantly stoplights out all over the city, causing increased traffic. Even our nice hotel in Johannesburg, which was set up on the compound’s generator power, had trouble switching to generator the last night we were there, and we woke up without power or water for a couple of hours. The problem is constantly top of mind for residents, and an enormous percentage of the advertising we saw either referenced, joked about, or promised solutions to the pain of living with load shedding. Unfortunately, with a government-funded power system that sees constant embezzlement of allocated funds, there is no faith of or hope in improvement any time soon.

We were planning both a bike tour in Soweto and a visit to the Apartheid museum on our last day, but because our flight got moved up a couple of hours, we only had time for the bike tour. Despite the amazing things we’ve heard about the museum, we both thought the bike tour was the right option for us. We learned a lot about the history of this important township and I felt a lot more connected to the city after talking to locals.

Soweto - originally South Western Townships - was an area where Black residents of Johannesburg were moved in the 1930s and 40s. It quickly became the largest Black city in South Africa, with a current population of more than 1 million. It was home to Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and Trevor Noah (the South Africans would like Trevor Noah back, but say America can keep Elon Musk). It’s also the home of the 1976 student uprising, where students of all ages protested a ruling that Afrikaans, a language developed by the Dutch settlers of the area, should be the language used in schools in Soweto, destroying the educational opportunities of the residents. The protests were violently suppressed, with more than 1,000 killed or injured, but civil unrest grew until the repeal of apartheid in the 1990s. We heard a lot of exasperation with the current government, but there’s a general sense that one of the more successful government efforts of the past 30 years has been free, accessible education for all South Africans. To learn a bit more about the history of Soweto you can read this page or the Wikipedia article - there seems to be a dearth of well written information about Soweto on the internet which is a shame. Please let us know if you find anything else!

Our guide Tebogo, a Soweto local, led us on our bike tour through the West Orlando suburb (We can’t recommend One Day Africa enough - look them up if you’re in Cape Town or Johannesburg). We visited Nelson Mandela’s house and museum, then biked to the decommissioned Orlando Towers, which were previously part of a coal power plant and now home to a complex that features food, beer, and activities like in-tower bungie jumping and paintball. On the way back, we biked next to an improvised “shanty” town, where we saw how some of the township’s poorest residents lived (and waved back to a lot of kids).

Something that struck us throughout our time in the cities was the sense of hope - despite the significant social and governmental issues faced by the South Africans, there’s a general feeling that things can and will get better. I’ll be thrilled to see it. We’d highly recommend visiting South Africa, and please book some tours with Black-owned tour companies while you’re there.

Next, we get to show you some safari animals.