If I had to pick one word to describe Cape Town it would be contrast. The vibrant Victoria & Alfred Waterfront is the gateway to Robben Island, the austere maximum security prison that held Nelson Mandela. Gentrified, predominantly white areas like Green Point and the Southern Suburbs contrast sharply with the sprawling townships where people of colour have their homes and the colourful Muslim area of Bo-Kaap.
And towering over all of it is the extraordinary Table Mountain, which is there one day and gone the next. It makes for a melting pot of experiences and education that I found fascinating.
There are many choices of hotels and areas to stay in Cape Town. But, after much research and debate, my friend and I opted for the Dysart Boutique Hotel in Green Point. It’s close to the more touristy V&A Waterfront, but not as expensive and has a decent selection of restaurants. And the Dysart itself was great, the staff couldn’t have been more helpful, there’s a nice outside terrace and the cooked-to-order breakfast was excellent.
Wandering the waterfront
After checking in, we walked straight down to the V&A Waterfront, which is lively and packed with places to eat, drink and shop. The Victoria shopping centre has all the well-known brands you might need and more, including an iStore and shops to buy a local travel adaptor as ours didn’t work. Tasha’s in the shopping centre was our restaurant choice for lunch. Great salads and sandwiches washed down with Waterford Rose-Mary rose wine, meant it quickly became a Cape Town favourite. After lunch we found plenty of interesting shops around the waterfront, as well as a local choir and of course some great views of Table Mountain.
Later that evening we got an Uber back to the waterfront for dinner at Baia. Using Uber is one of my tips for South Africa and you can find more trip planning advice in this post. We requested a table with a view of the harbour and they delivered. Baia specialises in fish and both the ceviche starter and Tre Pesca, a three-fish main course, were excellent. I’d also recommend their De Grendel Rose, but to be fair we didn’t have a bad glass of rose wine in Cape Town, or during our whole South Africa trip. They were very similar to those coming out of Provence and the Languedoc in Southern France. And Baia also did great cocktails.
Learning about Robben Island’s stark past
There are lots of boat trips on offer at the V&A Waterfront and it’s also where you start the tour to the infamous prison, Robben Island. You can only visit the World Heritage Site on a guided tour and there aren’t many each day, so it’s best to book in advance. As the island is 7.5 miles off the coast of Cape Town the visit starts with a 30-minute ferry trip which got quite choppy on a rainy day, so we were glad to get off!
Robben Island is completely flat and has been a prison and a leper colony at different times. But most people know it for holding political prisoners from the 1960s to 1991. It was intended to silence those critical of apartheid but became a focus for the movement to end it.
Once off the ferry from Cape Town, the tour started with a bus ride around the island with a guide who clearly explained everything we were seeing. The first stop was the leper graveyard. People with the disease were banished here and afterwards, all of the buildings they used were demolished except for the church.
Next was Robert Sobukwe’s House, the leader of the Pan Africanist Congress, an offshoot of the better-known African National Congress (ANC). He was held in solitary confinement in this small compound for nine years and not allowed to speak to other political prisoners for fear he would incite unrest.
Sobukwe’s original crime was mobilising a mass protest against the so-called ‘stupid book’. This was a pass that had to be carried by black people who were only allowed to travel between their place of work and the township where they lived. Six guards were watching Sobukwe and the kennels for the prison dogs were also in the same compound. Guards at Robben Island patrolled between high double fences with the dogs. So it’s no surprise that no one ever escaped and made it across the water to Cape Town.
The lime quarry is next on the tour where prisoners including Nelson Mandela did hours of hard labour in the scorching sun. For many that led to eye disorders in later life. There’s a small cave where prisoners ate and where educated prisoners gave secret lessons to others. In 1995 Nelson Mandela went back for a reunion of political prisoners. He laid a stone on the ground in the quarry and then other former prisoners followed suit, creating a pile which serves as a memorial to the time they spent there.
The island’s small village is where the prison guards lived as a daily commute from Cape Town wasn’t practical. It had its own post office, clinic and swimming pool. Today, around 200 people live there who work for the heritage site. There’s also a lookout point on the island’s coast where the bus stops. It seems pretty bleak, but apparently you can sometimes see penguins and seals. Robben is the Dutch name for seal.
Once the island tour is done you get to see inside the Maximum Security Prison with a guide who is an ex-political prisoner. The Living Legacy part of the tour in F-section was where he described his experience of being held there for seven years. He told us that the worst part was the first six months in a detention area where he was tortured to try and get information. He said he would rather do seven years in the F-section cell than six months in detention.
The cell was a long room but very small for the 50 prisoners it housed. Initially, prisoners slept on mats on the floor or their blankets. But later they got bunk beds. Our guide told us that at one stage during a hunger strike, he was too weak to get up the bunk bed ladder, so he slept back on the floor.
The prison operated a classification system A-D which determined how many letters from home and visits you could have. Prisoners could work up from D depending on their behaviour which was assessed every six months by a board. The system was intended to divide prisoners, as was the way food was distributed with black people getting less than Indians and Coloureds (people of mixed race). But the prisoners didn’t let that happen and shared food despite the threat of consequences if they got caught.
Nelson Mandela was held in a single cell in B-section as were the other leaders of the anti-apartheid movement. It was very small with just a mat on the floor to sleep on. Outside the row of cells was a yard area where they broke up rocks when they were not at the lime quarry. Extraordinary to look at that tiny cell and realise that is where Nelson Mandela wrote his book, The Long Walk to Freedom. A poignant end to an excellent tour.
Exploring Cape Town’s City Bowl
Away from the V&A Waterfront, there is plenty to see in Cape Town’s city centre. Long Street cuts right through it and is lined with a mixture of nice and seedy shops as well as some hotels. We’d considered the Granddaddy Hotel which looks great, but I was glad we hadn’t opted to stay in that area.
Just off Long Street is leafy Greenmarket Square with stalls selling a range of craft items and souvenirs. I suspected they would be the first of many I’d see on my travels but couldn’t resist a brightly painted stone elephant.
Walking out of the square a left turn into Wale Street leads down to St George’s Cathedral, the only church that welcomed all denominations during apartheid. It has some nice stained glass windows but my favourite part was the Siyahamba Labyrinth, a walking meditation path in the cloister. The circular path leads you to the centre where you can pause for reflection before following the path back out.
Next to the cathedral is Arch for Arch, a rather beautiful wooden arch which was unveiled for Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s 86th birthday in 2017. If you walk through the arch you’ll quickly see the back of the South African Houses of Parliament on the left while the National Library is on the right. Both are gorgeous buildings.
The entrance to Company’s Garden is here too which is a lovely green oasis in the heart of Cape Town’s city centre. It was originally the vegetable patch for the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and there’s still a small vegetable garden.
In the middle of the garden is a nice cafe where I stopped for lunch, though had to beat a hasty retreat inside when the squirrels showed a lot of interest in my sandwich! Towards the end of the garden is a monument behind which are some spectacular views of Table Mountain.
Another place worth checking out nearby is the Slave Lodge Museum, one of the oldest buildings in South Africa. I hadn’t appreciated that the Dutch brought thousands of slaves to Cape Town from countries like India, Indonesia, East Africa and Madagascar when the indigenous population refused to do their bidding. The museum charts the history and experiences of the slaves. I found the Column of Memory particularly moving as it holds the names of almost all of the slaves held here.
Nearby is the Dutch church, Groote Kerk which was South Africa’s first church. Behind it is Church Square, where slaves were once traded. A series of black granite blocks with the names of slaves engraved serves as a memorial to that time.
Not far from here is Grand Parade, a vast concrete space where you’ll find Cape Town’s City Hall. It was also where I got the best view of Table Mountain’s tablecloth. That’s the band of cloud that sometimes sits on top of the mountain and looks very strange when there is blue sky above. Though this was preferable to the previous day when it was very rainy and the mountain never appeared!
Beautiful and bright Bo-Kaap
On the opposite side of the city centre to City Hall is Bo-Kaap which must be one of Cape Town’s most photographed areas because of its stunningly colourful houses. Bo-Kaap’s narrow cobbled streets were originally a garrison for soldiers but later it was where many slaves moved after being released in the 1830s.
Sitting against the backdrop of Table Mountain Bo-Kaap is a predominantly Muslim area. The Auwal Mosque is the oldest place where Islam was worshipped in the country. It’s a great area for just wandering the streets to admire the brightly painted homes and browsing the shops. The Atlas Trading Company is an excellent store selling all sorts of everything, including every type of herb and spice a cook might need.
Away from the city centre is where you’ll see quite a different side of Cape Town. Millions of people live in the townships which were established during apartheid to segregate the city’s non-white inhabitants. And despite apartheid ending in 1990, that segregation is still disappointingly evident. We did a tour of the oldest township Langa with Siviwe Tours which I’ll write about in a separate post. It was quite an eye-opener.
And in another post, I’ll cover the Cape Peninsula which is just a short drive south of the city centre but features peaks, penguins and a scenic coastal drive. As I said at the start of this post, Cape Town is most definitely a city of many contrasts!
For advice and tips about visiting South Africa check out my post South Africa: tips and trip planning. And keep an eye on the South Africa section of my blog for future posts about other areas I visited on my trip.