First Cape Town Adventure

On Saturday morning we woke up and headed for Cape Town. A large majority of the people I hung out with had gone shark cage diving and the rest of us decided to go to Cape Town. The group was Beth, Jeff, Sarah, Casey, Karli and I. We Caught a train and headed in. Cape Town is a little under an hour by train and the ticket is about $1 American each way. At this point we didn’t really have much of a plan except that we were going to Cape Town. This is the way that you aren’t suppose to travel, but for us, not having a plan was part of the day’s adventure. Beforehand we decided that we would like to go to the beach if possible, so that was the mindset we had. When we got off the train, we kind of just started walking. This was a very different world from Stellenbosch and felt much more like Africa. Here the black to white ratio flip flopped and now it was 90% black to 10% white. I was now part of the minority for one of the first times in my life.

Eventually, we found a Cape Town tourism information station, we looked through some stuff, grabbed some maps, and headed on our way. Beth, Jeff, and Karli were planning on staying over, so first looked for a hostel for them to stay at. We came to Long Street which one of the central streets with restaurants, stores, bars, and hotels. There were quite a few hostels, so they picked on that looked nice and got a room for less that $20. While we waited, we looked through all the brochures and maps we had picked up and decided what next. We decided our destination would be Camp’s Bay beach. It was a pretty good distance, so we hailed a cab and headed over. This cab ride was pretty awesome (well besides 5 of us squeezing in the backseat) because it went right over Table Mountain. When we got to the beach, it was a little touristy with restaurants and shops lining the beach, but absolutely beautiful. The beach was really nice with lots of rocks to go exploring on, but even cooler was that it was at the base of Table Mountain. This was great, turn your head one way and see the frigid, yet beautiful Atlantic Ocean and the other way you see the Table Mountain staring straight down at you. We spent the next few hours exploring and enjoying the beach. The big rocks in the water were really fun to explore because they created lots of tide pools that made their own little ecosystems. I spent quite a bit of time just watching the little fish and snails living their lives in this miniature version of the ocean. To mean it was fascinating. We also found some giant seaweed that was almost so big one person alone couldn’t hold it. Here's Beth and Jeff with it.

This beach was pretty diverse and had people of all races enjoying it. Still you could see a division of wealth apart between the white and black people on the beach, but it was the first time that I saw affluence in the black community. I could tell that some of the black people enjoying this beach were just as well off as the white people, which is something Stellenbosch doesn’t have.

Eventually, Casey, Sarah, and I left the others and headed back to Stellenbosch because we wanted to get a good night sleep to stay up and watch the Super Bowl into the wee hours of the night the next night.This trip helped me to start opening my eyes a little bit more to what Africa actually is. This will be the first of very many trips I will go on to Cape Town. What I was struck with most during this trip was that I felt like I became aware of the prejudice that exists inside of me. I would be the first to say that I think everyone is equal and there are many different people of all races, gender, sexuality, etc that are much better than me out there, however in this situation I could feel that no one is without prejudice. When in America when a person enters an all black area they think this must be a bad area. This is something that is ingrained in us from a young age and no matter how hard you fight to think and live free from racism, this is a thought that is hard to move away from. When everyone in a city is black I found myself continuing to ask myself “are we in a bad area?” Then I tell myself that everywhere here is a black area and I must get used to that not being a symbol of something negative. Things like these are the ideas that I hope to break while I am here to become much more open-minded.