Good Hope

​Today’s excursion took us out of Cape Town proper and into the “greater cape,” as it were. 

The bus took us south along the west coastline of the Cape. It is rugged and rocky and beautiful. 

The Atlantic Ocean pounds the shore and the wind is relentless. Waves of rain squalls bring intermittent showers that can be seen approaching across the water. 

At Cape Point there is a funicular up the hill to the old lighthouse, but wasn’t working. Instead, a small shuttle bus took tourists up an incredibly narrow road to where it could just barely turn around. 

From there, we climbed 60 or 70 stone steps to the top.

The lighthouse was built in 1860 and operated for 59 years. But it was largely useless because it is shrouded in clouds more than half the days of the year — a point brought home in 1911 when a passenger steamer hit a reef just off shore. 

Down at shore level we reached the actual Cape Point. In school we learned that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa, but they lied. That point is Cape Agulhas, roughly 100 miles to the southeast. So the signs here are careful to say, “the most southwestern point of the African continent.” Truth in advertising?

Still, the Cape of Good Hope was historically the rough spot for ships to get around. So much so that the first explorers here named it “Cape of Storms” and the king of Portugal renamed it for better marketing. There are more than 700 shipwrecks recorded here over the centuries since Bartolomeu Dias arrived here in 1488. 

We continued up the east coast of the Cape and had a very filling lunch in the little tourist burg of Simon’s Town. Then we doubled back a few miles to Boulders Beach where a flock of endangered African Penguins are protected by the South African National Parks Service. 

The protection consists of wooden walkways that allow hundreds of ticketed tourists to walk down to the beach and get close to the birds without actually stepping on their sand. 

After waiting in a long ticket line, the rain and wind began just about the time we finally got to the penguins. 

Though they were very cute, we weren’t inclined to get soaked watching them. So we took a couple pictures and headed for someplace dry. 

Back in Cape Town, we visited an old church that has been transformed into “The District Six Museum.” Our tour leader struggled to explain the significance in a coherent manner. And the museum itself had several themes going, all revolving around the struggle against apartheid. 

But the gist is that some 60,000 black and “colored” people were displaced from their homes in this neighborhood in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, often with little more than a suitcase. Their homes were destroyed and they were forbidden to even be in the area without a work pass. Only “whites” were allowed to stay. 

While District Six was far from the only place where this occurred — it was repeated across South Africa — it was the catalyst for the anti-apartheid movement.