Day 113: Cape Town And Table Mountain

We flew into Cape Town last night and were greeted with a spectacular view of Table Mountain on approach. After a totally incompetent tour guide let us off at the wrong hotel and wasted three valuable shopping hours, we ended up at the Commodore Hotel (which seemed like a Hilton Garden Inn). It's only a few minutes from the Victoria & Albert Waterfront area, so we went out for dinner at the Harbour View restaurant with some of our safari friends.

Cape Town is South Africa's second-largest city and legislative capital. It is also the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament. Humans first settled here about 15,000 years ago, but little is known about the area as the inhabitants had no written history. The first European to visit was the Portuguese explorer Bartelomeu Dias in 1488. He named the area "Cape Of Storms," which was hastily renamed "Cape Of Good Hope" by the King to encourage further exploration of the sea route to India. (Marketing is at its very best, there.) 

In 1510, the Portuguese were badly defeated by the local tribes, and the European powers made little effort to establish control. Preferring instead to use Table Bay (the harbour) as a stopover on the way to the Indies. They established a healthy trade in tobacco, copper, and iron in exchange for food and water. The Dutch slowly gained control over the next 50 years and in 1652 expanded the settlement by importing slaves from Indonesia and Malaysia. The Brits turned up in 1795, captured Cape Town, and then returned it to the Dutch less than ten years later. The Dutch foolishly partnered with France as part of the Napoleonic Wars, so the Brits promptly retook it in 1806. 

Growth continued through the 19th century, culminating in the Boer Wars (against the former Dutch settlers) in the 1890s. This ultimately caused the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910. Cape Town itself was known as one of the most racially integrated cities in SA - until 1948 when the apartheid policy came into being under the government of the National Party.

In one of the most famous moments marking the end of apartheid, Nelson Mandela made his first public speech since his imprisonment from the balcony of Cape Town City Hall hours after being released on 11 February 1990. His speech heralded the beginning of a new era for the country. The first democratic election was held four years later, on 27 April 1994.

What did we do? We shopped and picked up some much-needed supplies from the pharmacy. The V&A area is quite delightful, with a huge mall, plenty of outside restaurants, a small Ferris wheel, and .. of course .. a great view of Table Mountain.