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First Days in Cape Town, SA – It felt weird landing into Cape Town yesterday. It’s the only place on my around the world journey that I’ve been to before. Arriving back came with a mixture of emotions. Bittersweet memories of my last time here in 2007, with my then husband, started flooding back to me. I don’t normally like going back to where I’ve been before for this reason. It always conjures up the past, which I no longer wish to recall. Not because it was bad or good, it’s just makes me nostalgic, which always makes me sad either way. Mixed with that was the onslaught of South African accents and way of life, which kept constantly swirling up thoughts on another boy, who has had ahold of my heart for many years, and who considers the Mother City home. Again making me nostalgic for a past that I hoped travelling would help me leave behind. And then there was the excitement of wanting to re explore this beautiful city with new eyes, under a new me. I know I’ve changed in the last eight years and I expected the city had too. This was all combined with mild anxiety at settling into a new hostel and new surroundings and being on my own, again. These jumbled thoughts and emotions were not a good mix for someone sleep deprived from two days travelling and two nights of half sleep in upright airplane seats and on hard angled airport chairs trying to lay fetel positioned wrapped around armrests from each seat. I’m wise enough now to know that the best remedy is an early night, don’t think about anything and to look at things fresh in the morning. And boy did the morning look so much better! After my enormous buffet breakfast, I wandered into Long Steet for a delicious Flat White at a trendy brunch cafe. Then headed out for a day of sightseeing on the open top city sightseeing buses. It was a perfect Autumn day (I’m back in the Southern Hemisphere remember) with blue skies, warm sunshine and a cool shady breeze. Each turn the bus made, I fell more in love with this beautiful city. Of all the cities I’ve been too, this one feels most like home to me. With a backdrop of the majestic Table Mountain rolling into the white sandy beaches and crystal Atlantic Ocean waters, Cape Town has what I consider an idyllic landscape. Add to that the eclectic mix of stunning architecture from the brightly coloured Cape Malay houses to Art Deco skyscrapers to the Dutch colonial facades on Long Street to the new modern structures, and my visual senses go wild. I love the contrasts. If that wasn’t enough, Cape Town now seems beaming with super trendy coffee shops, artisan breweries, handmade arts and crafts galore, gourmet food, sleek designer clothes shops and lots of cool, hip culture vibe. And I haven’t even mentioned the whole area is surrounded by a never ending story of wine lands producing some of the best wines in the world. Of course, the effects of apartheid can’t be swept under the carpet and ignored. There’s still dangerous areas of the city where homeless people live in cardboard boxes below underpasses. Begging exists, although less of a shock to me now after being places more prolific in the world. The townships still exist, although I’m told shrinking. Inequality, and it’s hatred, lie there in the backdrop too. Still, Cape Town has made great strides since I was here last. It has developed a chic, hip, trendy vibe teeming with culture, fine dining and delicious wines. I love it. Oh, and did I mention the weather here averages in the mid to low 20c with an abundance of sunshine? I could so live here. Just would need a South African husband. Any takers?* *Said taker must be willing to buy the below South African diamond ring, which I keep seeing everywhere since I arrived….. |
