That Time in Cape Town (The Revenge)

That's more like it.

A public park, complete with Vootrekker jungle gym.

The guide/ex-prisoner shows Robben Island.

Several months after the unexpected medical detour on the way to South Africa, Mr. and Mrs. O were ready to exact their revenge.Why the obsession with Cape Town? In short, it is not Africa. This is where expats tired of life in high-walled, overcrowded and polluted cities go for a break (Johannesburg included). It is practically a rite of passage for many. From the stories, it sounds like the Happiest Place on Earth. (The open spaces! The seaside! The sidewalks! The stores! The restaurants! The food! The wine! The potable water! etc)

After many months in Ghana, Cape Town is indeed like stepping into a dreamland. It is stunningly gorgeous, with the backdrop of Table Mountain, the ocean, the greenery, it makes one understand why the Dutch decided to make a home and why Afrikaaners went to atrocious lengths to hold onto it for themselves for 400 years.

For the family, it meant staying in a quality hotel where everything worked and no detail was overlooked, popping out every morning for a coffee and pastry, followed by a walk in the park and a trip to a memorable and well-executed tourist site that accommodates children (Cape Town Kids has a massive list of things to do).

Little Miss in the "Nemo" tank.

And indeed, there were many places to see. Just a few highlights:

• The V&A Waterfront: featuring seaside shopping, restaurants and other toursity places like the top-notch Two Oceans Aquarium.
• The Cape of Good Hope: a drive down to the cape is well worth it, including cliffside roads, a national park, and visiting the penguins at Boulder Beach.
• Table Mountain: the iconic backdrop to the city also has a cableway to the summit (weather permitting) and the views are much more panoramic than a humble blog can handle.  
• Robben Island Museum: the infamous island prison that housed Nelson Mandela and many other political prisoners, which is a short boat ride from Cape Town and a sobering place to visit.
• Woolworth's: not actually a tourist site, but for a Ghana resident, walking into a store to buy a gallon of fresh organic milk and local raspberries is an experience in itself.
• World of Birds: no time to drive out of town for a safari? Not going to shell out for your pre-schooler? This place has over 3,000 birds and various mammals and reptiles, including an enclosure to feed squirrel monkeys, which alone was worth the price of admission.

  

  Enjoying the views down the Cape.

  
  

There is a darker side to Cape Town as well: the effects of apartheid are still quite strong, including the legacy of enforced segregation, which means blacks mostly live in the under-developed outskirts, while the whites have the prime real estate downtown and by the sea. Security bars are everywhere and the city has been given the nickname "Rape Town" for good reason.

To get a sense of the other side of Cape Town, Mr. O took a Township Tour, which sheds some light on the non-touristy side of the city, including Langa and Gugulethu. While blacks are not required to live in them, townships are for many the only affordable option. While they do not have the physical poverty common in Ghana, there is a spiritual poverty, with astronomical rates of HIV, alcoholism, drug abuse and unemployment.

Oh hello there. Welcome to my beach.

As scary as they sound, they are also communities and municipalities (some in the hundreds of thousands). Life in the townships is undoubtedly rough, but there are also those who are working to improve life, and while tours like these are derided by many as poverty tourism, participants unanimously praise it as giving a window into an area ignored by outsiders and building intercultural understanding.

Life on the other side of Table Mountain.

After seeing both sides, there was one last obligatory stop: the supermarket. At the nearby Pick and Pay, the family stocked up on essentials of all kinds: organic fair trade coffee, instant oatmeal, fruit snacks, baking ingredients, medical supplies and other goodies. Thus, the family made sure they used all of their allotted weight on their trip back to Accra and had a happy ending to the trip.