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Cape Town

Cape Town has some of the most stunning views of any place I’ve seen. The city itself is wrapped around a beautiful bay (the “cape” part of Cape Town) and behind the city sits Table Mountain, named for its completely flat top. Because of the wind that sweeps in off of the ocean, Cape Town is almost completely smog-free. The ocean also keeps Cape Town cool, so the temperature rarely climbs above 80. Unfortunately, we only get to spend two weeks in the South African sun, and between the first three days trying to adjust from Chile time, and our trip to Kruger National Park, I didn’t have too much time to explore. Also, here in Cape Town, I’m living a good 30 minutes from downtown (crime and such), whereas in Santiago I was right there in the city. This made trips to museums and such difficult, but I’ll research the stuff I didn’t get to do.

About South Africa…

In 1948, a system of government called apartheid was put into use. It made racial segregation the law; you could be arrested if you were black and you walked into a white neighborhood. It’s hard to express just how atrocious this system was. Only white people could be elected to government, so for forty years the 13% of the population that was white had total rule over the other 87% that was black, coloured (In SA, “coloured” means someone of mixed race) or Indian. Of course, this meant that whites went to great schools, lived in gigantic houses, and had black servants (practically slaves; they were paid often only 20 rand, or about 3 dollars a month). The rest of the population lived in townships, where thousands of people would live in about one square mile. They survived in tin huts with no electricity, water or toilets. Death was fairly common as the South African "Mafia" and police force brutalized or killed many. When blacks or coloureds protested peacefully, in some instances they were shot without warning. You’d be surprised how much deeper the rabbit hole goes, but I’m not here to make you vomit, so I’ll leave out the worst.

In 1994, after decades of pressure from the UN, South Africa became a democracy. Now people of all races are free to live, go to school with, or marry whomever they choose. Some problems still remain; the crime rate in Cape Town is astronomical, 30% of the country is unemployed, and a huge portion of the population still lives in townships. But despite all of this, South Africa is heading the right way. SA was the only country to develop nukes and then dismantle all of them. Education is improving, and right now SA has the highest GDP per capita in Africa. South Africa also has one of the most diverse populations in the world- there are dozens of different religions practiced and 11 official languages.

Here are a couple dozen pictures- These provide an up-close look at what we've been doing

The Cathedral

I managed to pass through Saint George’s cathedral while downtown. It wasn’t quite as elaborate as the ones I saw in Santiago, and it was also completely empty. The Anglican Church isn’t dominant in South Africa because there are so many different religious influences.

Famous Clock

In the harbor, there is a giant ball that drops every day at 1:00 PM. It was used by sailors a long time ago, so that when they came into harbor they could see the ball drop and check that they had the correct time. If they did not have the correct time then they could not use their sextants to navigate.

Animals

Since it was my sister’s birthday, we went to Kruger National Park. The weather wasn’t the greatest, but we still saw a lot of game. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.