Cape Town, Day 1

Feburary 24

John:  Our arrival in South Africa was anticipated in a way the day earlier with our roughest seas to date on this voyage--ten- to twelve-foot swells that sent the ship rolling side-to-side in a very dramatic fashion, with the occasional truly remarkable jolt that would send chairs tipping over, people crashing into each other in the halls (with the sound of a collective "Whoooooa!"), stuff falling off shelves. We heard the terrible, terrible news that some of the liquor and a lot of the stemware in the Faculty Lounge bar was destroyed when it fell to the floor in a particularly big swell. Fortunately, no one in our group got seriously sea-sick, and we simply battened down the hatches and stuck together while stuff went flying all around us. Apparently rough seas are pretty typical as you approach the southern tip of Africa, where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet; a couple of years ago, the ship was delayed for two days by winds so high that they made the final approach to the docks impossibly risky. 

But we woke up to a view that made it immediately clear that the ride was worth it. Out on the ship's observation deck, we could see the amazing sight that distinguishes Cape Town, the view of the beautiful Table Mountain, the backdrop to the city and the entire Cape.

Cape Town is a beautiful city, with the mountain in the background and the ocean at its front door. We're not the first people to make the comparison to the Bay Area in the US--you get the same combination of ocean, cliffs, and urbanity that you can get there. If anything, it looks and feels a little nicer, since it's less crowded and the infrastructure is therefore less strained. The waterfront, named for Queen Victoria and her son Alfred, who did the initial development of the port as early as the 1860s, is reminiscent of the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, with shops, restaurants, and entertainers--though again nicer, with a mix of Victorian and modern architecture, and, again, Table Mountain as the backdrop. We had lunch at an outdoor cafe on a street turned into a pedestrian mall that felt a lot like Charlottesville. The contrast with Ghana, where we were last week, could hardly be greater. 

Aidan:  Well, Cape Town is a magnificent place. It has tons of fun stuff to do.  It's a very big place, so it takes a long time to walk from place to place. And the sidewalks are made out of bricks so it kind of hurts your feet. I'd recommend the company gardens. It's a big garden, which is really beautiful. 

There was a Castle, the Castle of Good Hope. It's  a really awesome thing. It's the shape of a star, so if somebody is at a corner, they can see different ways. There are tons of cannons, and there's this military museum, which has a lot of really awesome things in it. It has actual rifles! it has pistols and swords and shields. We saw an actual cannon fire--except that it didn't have a cannon ball in it.  Because if it did, it would blow up some of the Castle--they didn't want to harm the Castle.

The signal cannon being fired at the Castle of Good Hope

John: Aidan is describing the sites of our first-day's sortie.  First, we went to the Castle of Good Hope, built by the Dutch when they arrived here in the middle of the seventeenth century, and then expanded and refurbished by the British when they took over the place. We explored the ramparts, and let the kids--we had gone out with our friends Victor and Elizabeth and their son Josiah, and with Lori and Ridge and their sons Charlie and Sam--run around in the castle grounds. 

Outside the castle is the city hall. The area in front of it was a green space and parade grounds when the Dutch were here, and is also the space where the crowd gathered to hear Nelson Mandela give his first address after being released from prison in 1990.  May be someday it won't be a won't be a parking lot, but that's what it is now.

In the afternoon, we walked around the town, and once again let kids run around, this time in the "Company Gardens," a lovely botanical garden on the site of the first farmland that the Dutch used when they founded Cape Town. The idea at first was that Cape Town would be a supply post for Dutch ships traveling to India and China. 

After our day of rough seas, I had to wonder about what it was like to be sailing for months in those small wooden vessels, with no idea, really, where you were, and no good idea about when if ever you might get to where you were hoping to go, and what you might find there. Add in scurvy, rats, storms, sharks, and so on, and it must really have been quite an experience. We retired to our ship, a virtual luxury hotel, now calmly moored at the dock near the V & A Waterfront.