Archive for the ‘Slave Lodge’ tag
To Know Cape Town is to Love Cape Town
I spent the last few days of my South African trip in Cape Town, absorbing the atmosphere of the harbour and all its fabulous restaurants and shops, visiting the museums, taking stunning drives up the coastline to Pringle Bay, going past the vineyards, the golden beaches and the mountains with their communities of colorful pastel holiday homes.
The Cape, is much more familiar to my Northern European eyes, green and rainy. I felt more relaxed because its more racially integrated than Johannesburg. I could walk after dark, but I still kept my car doors locked when I drove, day or night, but that was to keep out the baboons!
I went to an excellent museum, the Slave Lodge, to continue my cultural understanding. The building was where the slaves brought by the Dutch settlers around the 17th century. The slaves were brought from Indonesia, China, India and Malaysia as well as the West African coast. I now know where the culture of South Africans get their rich heritage, it’s so visible in all the faces of the people here. Add in the British, the Europeans the Jews, Portuguese, Greek, Spanish, French, Eastern European countries and the indigenous Khoi-San, the Zulu, the Xhosa and a few other African communities and you have a city diverse and varied as London.
So, my last impressions of South Africa as I leave my boutique hotel Cape Town, is all the beauty, all the diversity, all the strife and all the joy has made this part of the country a place of hope, a place of opportunities, a place of struggles and most of all, a place I fell in love with. Even with all the segregation and the setbacks, South Africa is a marvellous place to visit.