Cape Town
The Cape Heritage Hotel is one of the oldest buildings in Cape Town at around 300 years old. In its courtyard winding itself round various frames and supports is what is known to be the oldest vine in South Africa and in much the same manner as happens in an Austrian 'Heurige' the grapes are harvested each year and turned into the hotel's own wine. It is however rather exclusive producing 4 magnums and just 12 bottles last year.
The hotel is delightfully old-fashioned with just enough mod cons to make sure it has everything it needs, whilst retaining all of its georgian charm The floors are all polished timber, hopelessly uneven with old rugs; we have a four-poster bed, complete with canopy, but a great bathroom with a large free-standing Victorian style double-ended bath, separate lounge and air conditioning. Our ceiling is around 9ft high by the door, rising to at least 11ft by the windows. It's charming and rather fun. We're only staying tonight and tomorrow night, but the more time you spend here, the more the hotel grows on you. The staff are almost the best we've encountered all holiday. You could be a guest in their home for all the care and attention they seem to take.
We have spent much of our time here being tourists aboard the CitySightSeeing buses that run right round all the major sights. We've been most of the way up table mountain, but ducked out of the cable car as it was incredibly windy. It is much too hot to do the climb on foot, so we probably won't go to the top.
The gentle drive through the various bays and city suburbs that line the line coast road is fabulous. Once again give a place a great view and water and you have instant high rent district. There are some very fancy properties looking out across the ocean across white sand beaches and palm trees. In places, however, they are packed so tightly together, the population density can't be far short of that in the townships, which flank the city's outlying areas.
On our second day, we took the ferry to Robben Island, not knowing quite what to expect from our tour of this former prison island. Our 11km crossing was in a ferry called the Susan Kruger, one of the boats that had, until the closure of the prison, been used to transport prisoners to this isolated and brutal place. The crossing to the island was smooth, just a gentle swell and slowly as we approached Robben Island it appeared out of the haze. Little did we know at this point that by the time our tour was over the weather would have turned decidedly unpleasant. Our crossing back to the mainland took place in almost a storm. Visibility was zero, rain lashed the decks and the waves rocked the boat every which way. By the time we reached Cape Town harbour, there were a number of very green and quesy looking travellers staggering ashore. Fortunately we were not amongst then. As we disembarked, the harbour tannoy announced that no further ferries would run due to the weather and disappointed crowds began queueing for ticket refunds.
For our tour of the island itself, we were transferred to a coach once we arrived and a guide explained the island's history, first as a stopover for 16th and 17th century mariners, then later as a leper colony and then finally as a prison island. The most interesting and moving part of the island tour was the visit to the prison itself and to the cell - the very small cell - where Nelson Mandela spent his last six years before his release in 1991. This part of the tour was conducted by a former inmate, a man who himself spent four years incarcerated there as a political prisoner. He had been sentenced to 30 years in 1987 for anti-government activities and was released at the same time as Mandela under the same amnesty. His presentation and explanation of conditions inside Robben Island was both moving and harrowing. The number of former inmates guiding visitors in this way is, for obvious reasons, dwindling. This was a truly unique and remarkable opportunity to see a less than glorious piece of recent history through the eyes of a man who was there, who lived it, whose life was not just touched by it, but deeply scarred by it. It would have been worth visiting Cape Town for this experience alone.
The hotel is delightfully old-fashioned with just enough mod cons to make sure it has everything it needs, whilst retaining all of its georgian charm The floors are all polished timber, hopelessly uneven with old rugs; we have a four-poster bed, complete with canopy, but a great bathroom with a large free-standing Victorian style double-ended bath, separate lounge and air conditioning. Our ceiling is around 9ft high by the door, rising to at least 11ft by the windows. It's charming and rather fun. We're only staying tonight and tomorrow night, but the more time you spend here, the more the hotel grows on you. The staff are almost the best we've encountered all holiday. You could be a guest in their home for all the care and attention they seem to take.
We have spent much of our time here being tourists aboard the CitySightSeeing buses that run right round all the major sights. We've been most of the way up table mountain, but ducked out of the cable car as it was incredibly windy. It is much too hot to do the climb on foot, so we probably won't go to the top.
The gentle drive through the various bays and city suburbs that line the line coast road is fabulous. Once again give a place a great view and water and you have instant high rent district. There are some very fancy properties looking out across the ocean across white sand beaches and palm trees. In places, however, they are packed so tightly together, the population density can't be far short of that in the townships, which flank the city's outlying areas.
On our second day, we took the ferry to Robben Island, not knowing quite what to expect from our tour of this former prison island. Our 11km crossing was in a ferry called the Susan Kruger, one of the boats that had, until the closure of the prison, been used to transport prisoners to this isolated and brutal place. The crossing to the island was smooth, just a gentle swell and slowly as we approached Robben Island it appeared out of the haze. Little did we know at this point that by the time our tour was over the weather would have turned decidedly unpleasant. Our crossing back to the mainland took place in almost a storm. Visibility was zero, rain lashed the decks and the waves rocked the boat every which way. By the time we reached Cape Town harbour, there were a number of very green and quesy looking travellers staggering ashore. Fortunately we were not amongst then. As we disembarked, the harbour tannoy announced that no further ferries would run due to the weather and disappointed crowds began queueing for ticket refunds.
For our tour of the island itself, we were transferred to a coach once we arrived and a guide explained the island's history, first as a stopover for 16th and 17th century mariners, then later as a leper colony and then finally as a prison island. The most interesting and moving part of the island tour was the visit to the prison itself and to the cell - the very small cell - where Nelson Mandela spent his last six years before his release in 1991. This part of the tour was conducted by a former inmate, a man who himself spent four years incarcerated there as a political prisoner. He had been sentenced to 30 years in 1987 for anti-government activities and was released at the same time as Mandela under the same amnesty. His presentation and explanation of conditions inside Robben Island was both moving and harrowing. The number of former inmates guiding visitors in this way is, for obvious reasons, dwindling. This was a truly unique and remarkable opportunity to see a less than glorious piece of recent history through the eyes of a man who was there, who lived it, whose life was not just touched by it, but deeply scarred by it. It would have been worth visiting Cape Town for this experience alone.
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