Table Mountain and the Mother City
“During the many years of incarceration on Robben Island, we
often looked across Table Mountain at its magnificent silhouette…
To us on Robben Island, Table Mountain was a beacon of hope. It
represented the mainland to which we knew we would one day return.”
– Nelson Mandela
When I think back to our time in Cape Town, Table Mountain dominates my memories much the same way that it dominates Cape Town’s sky line. It cradles the city and protects it, while it rises above the city and inspires.
View of Table Mountain from Robben Island - the island where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years in incarceration
You can catch glimpses of Table Mountain from many neighborhoods in town. It is not off in the distance; its presence is immediate. Its flat top is often covered with a thick fog, which Cape Townians dubbed the “tablecloth.”
View of Cape Town from the plane
View from town
You can tell that Cape Town residents are proud of their mountain; everyone we met asked us if we had gone to the top yet. A couple of days after we arrived, we took the revolving cable car up to the top, adding it to the list of mountains we have summited in our lifetime. (Yes, our definition of summit is very liberal; don’t judge us). We spent a few hours exploring the mountain’s flat top and peeking over the sides to see the city and ocean below.
Cable car going down with view of Signal Hill in the background
One of the many gorgeous views from the top
Sean and me at the top, with a view of Green Point Stadium, which was built for the World Cup, and the neighborhood of Green Point, which is where we stayed.
Cape Town’s position of being nestled between Table Mountain and the Atlantic Ocean, not to mention its cosmopolitan restaurants, shops and cafes or its temperate climate (it was supposed to be winter while we were there, for crying out loud!) makes Cape Town definitely live up to its hype.
Cape Town Sunset…
…over the Atlantic Ocean.
Green Point, Cape Town, South Africa
Happy Sunday and Go Steelers! No listening to the game this week for us – we’re in South Korea now, which means the game will happen at 2:00 a.m. our time.
On South Africa
At some point during my many ramblings, I may have mentioned that prior to going on this trip, I was more excited at the thought of travelling somewhere than to any place specific. Perhaps because foreign travel had always seemed so out of reach to me in my life, I never dwelled on the details and just daydreamed about going somewhere. Upon hearing about our trip, people would ask which country I was most excited about seeing. Since all of them never seemed to appease the questioner, I usually selected South Africa.
It probably was the most accurate answer. In college, I randomly took a class about South Africa because it was interdisciplinary and taught by two of my favorite professors. It was about seven years after the fall of apartheid, and we studied the country from a political perspective and a literary perspective. When I was done with the class, I thought, I want to visit South Africa someday. But it always seemed so far, so expensive, so foreign, so dangerous. I didn’t really believe that I would go there.
My 21 year old self was practical and didn’t let myself dream so big. Of course, my 21 year old self didn’t know my 31 year old self.
When it came to selecting countries to fill our crazy journey, South Africa was always on the list, even though I didn’t even know what there was to see besides Johannesburg and Cape Town. My 31 year old self forgot much of what my 21 year old self soaked up 10 years ago in the class room. All I could remember was that South Africa’s history is recent, tumultuous, and fascinating. And that I wrote my paper for the class on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was a post-apartheid commission designed to grant amnesty and forgiveness in exchange for the truth. As a young, idealistic pre-law student who was always on the lookout for justice, this was a concept I found strange but gratifying.
So, my jaded, cynical (yet strangely proactive) 31year old self started from scratch in re-educating myself about South Africa. There is much to learn. The country is huge – slightly less than twice the size of Texas. We could have benefited from another week or better planning. We didn’t allocate our month in the country accordingly. We dawdled too long in the beginning, and didn’t really start mapping out distances until almost a week in. The result was that we ended up hightailing it up the coast, skipping Durban, Sodwana Bay, and the Drakensburg Mountains just to make it to Kruger National Park in time for our reservations and our flight out of Johannesburg.
We were never bored in South Africa. It has world class cities and cosmopolitan touches. It has groups of people who still retain their traditional ways. It has natural beauty – mountains, cliffs, canyons, oceans, beaches, flowers, and open spaces. It has wildlife in their natural habitat, many of which we had never seen before outside of a zoo. It has friendly, enthusiastic and vibrant people – always singing, always joking. We saw many hard workers. There may be many poor people, but we saw very little begging, just innovative methods to make money. Just 16 years after the official end to apartheid, the country is still changing and working out the kinks. The all too recent past is fascinating to learn about, especially in the context of the ever changing present.
One man we met from East London said he thought his country is unique. I think he is probably right. It is developed, but still developing. It is unquestionably African, but unquestionably different than the rest of Africa. There are tribal influences, and there are Dutch and British influences. It has whites who consider themselves native Africans, with their own language. It has people who are really, really rich, but it has people who are really, really poor. My mind is always comparing and contrasting. I don’t quite know what to compare South Africa with. I think it stands on its own. I am glad my 31 year old self got to travel there.