Cape Town was the start of my epic journey through the black continent known as Africa. I arrived in this westernised city on the 3rd June, fresh faced and ready for the challenge that lay ahead of me. To be honest I was shitting myself as I had never ventured further than Europe before, apart from the two weeks I'd spent in Brazil with friends of the family. This was different. For the first time in my life I was traveling on my own. I had already booked a bed in a dorm room at Longstreet Backpackers on Longstreet, the hub of life in Cape Town. After dumping my stuff in the room and not really sure what to do with it or what the dorm room rules were as I had only ever stayed in Hotel rooms previously, I headed out onto the streets of Cape Town. The first thing that struck me almost instantly was how English everything looked. In my naivety I had imaged that everyone would be living in mud huts next too dirt roads. But this strange new place seemed more like Bournemouth than Africa. The market just off Longstreet was hectic and full of hawkers tying to sell wooden ornaments and paintings from clumsily erected wooden stalls with tarpaulin roofs. After I had exhausted my sightseeing around the city centre I made my way back to the backpackers where I introduced myself to my new room mates Hanz and Claire. Hanz a flamboyantly dressed character from Holland in his mid thirties to early forties, was dressed in flowery leggings and a blue shell suit top. He reminded me of the strange locals I see in Boscombe on a Saturday morning. His face was well tanned but weathered with age and his eyes looked continually tied. Claire was from Bristol and could not have been more different to Hanz. Being the same age as me she had a fresh glow to her completion and dressed conservatively. Where as Hanz was a loner when it came to traveling who enjoyed his own company over that of others, Claire craved companionship, which I was happy to provide as I two needed this most simple of human requests.
We spent the next few days together, visiting Robin Island on the Wednesday, taking the thirty minute trip across the bay, through rough sees that rocked the boat profusely from side to side causing a number of passengers to become sea sick. As we neared this small Island standing proud in the middle of the bay, we got our first glimpse of the prison that makes this Island so famous. Robin Island is where Nelson Mandela and other political activists had been imprisoned during the apartheid. The prison was only about forty years old and had been constructed by the inmates. The guides that escorted us around the Island and prison were ex-political prisoners themselves. In the evening I headed to a charity concert organised by White Ribbon Alliance who are involved with trying to stop cruelty to women and children in South Africa which was being held at a club called The Assembly on Harrington Street. The taxi driver who drove me there had a very sorry looking car which had trouble starting and the windscreen whippers didn't work so he had to peer out the side window to see where he was going as the rain started falling. There was mainly local bands present plus 'Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly.' from London who I got chatting with about my trip without realising who he was.
The following day myself and Claire ventured up Table Mountain. The one hour walk to the base almost killed us so we decided to take the cable cart to the top. This really tested my fear of heights. At the top the views were amazing across Cape Town and the bay beyond and felt like we were looking down on a model town.
On Friday 6th June I headed to the District 6 Museum which was a memorial to the Apartheid that occurred in South Africa during the 1960s. The dutch had colonised the country some years previously and when the English handed back power to the people the whites were the only ones aloud to vote in a new president and government even though Blacks outnumbered whites ten to one. The new government wanted there to be clear differences between these two ethnic groups giving the whites everything and the blacks nothing. The Museum in District 6 details how blacks were forced from there homes so they could be taken over by whites thus the colour bar was created in all it's malice and cruelty. Blacks had to carry identification cards and were forced to live in the city slums. On my final day in Cape Town I headed to Boulders beach to see the tiny African Penguins who love the humid climate.
