The Helpful Dichotomy of Now or Never
A Capitonian Adventure
The Gini index describes a country’s income inequality. South Africa’s is the highest in the world. And I gallivanted there for a week of vacation. How does that sit? Uncomfortably.
I decided to do this trip for many reasons— to celebrate a friend’s milestone birthday, to return to the continent of my youthful obsession, to get summer weather hiking opportunities in the middle of February, and to experiment with traveling on someone else’s lovingly prepared itinerary (yes, spreadsheets were involved). These were all reasons to override my long-held discomfort with vacationing in sub-Saharan Africa.
In earlier iterations of adulthood, I scratched my Africa bug with Important Work Trips, and that is what became meaningful to me. As my work took on a more domestic focus, the travel dried up – and with it, the Kiswahili, the access to rural Africa, the Zanzibari spices and fruit. Friends lived the international life I’d imagined for myself. I knew they were tired, frustrated, and sometimes lonely. But I fantasized about their expat experiences anyway.
It was the road not taken, and as I’ve grown more viscerally aware, time is limited. There may never be the career move that brings me back to Africa on the terms I desire. There may be more pandemics jeopardizing global travel. My health may fail. Someone I love may need me to stay close. I don’t know what’s going to happen and waiting for perfect started to sound more like it might be never. Never helps me make hard decisions. If the choice is Now or Never, I know what to do. So, I bought my plane ticket, and the birthday girl Julie, planner extraordinaire, took care of everything else.
Our group of Julie’s eleven friends stayed (mostly) in two Airbnbs in the colorful Bo-Kaap neighborhood on the slopes of Signal Hill descending into the city centre. On my first day, I learned from my 27-year-old Zimbabwean walking tour guide that our rentals were two of the 27,000 offline to young people like him desperately seeking affordable housing in the city. Oops.
The city of about 5 million residents affords many comparisons to San Francisco with its ocean views and mountainous coastline. The city streets are tidy and vibrant and belie the reputation for crime that I was counseled vehemently to take seriously enough that I took comically short uber rides to prevent walking two blocks alone after dark. It doesn’t feel dangerous. It also doesn’t feel especially African to me (who may not be a useful judge in this estimation). I didn’t see much of the red soil or recognize the scents I recalled from other visits to sub-Saharan Africa. It wasn’t til traveling back to the airport that I got a glimpse of the “informal settlements,” the expanse of corrugated metal roofs along the road. How do I make peace with this? I don’t. It’s too big for me to hold.
I take some solace that the same economic pressures we talk about at home – xenophobia, gentrification, joblessness, income inequality, racial and ethnic oppression – are happening worldwide, and that makes the challenges feel less nationalistic and more global. I think of the shared experience of “We all fall down” in the nursery rhyme apocryphally linked to the plague, and how often it is accompanied by laughter and standing back up again.
Enough of that – what did I do and see?
Walking food tour
I started with a food and history tour of the Bo-Kaap, which means upper Cape and has been home to a predominantly Muslim community ever since the Dutch settlers built its single-storied, flat-roofed row houses as homes for its enslaved workers in the 1760s. Several times of day and night, the call for prayer echoes through its cobblestone streets. Once land ownership laws shifted to allow homes to be owned by the residents in this community, the buildings swiftly transitioned from dilapidated and drab to being painted bright colors. An informal rule took hold that no house could be painted the same color as its adjacent homes. And the result is a tourist Mecca. My tour guide was a gay Zimbabwean who left his intolerant homeland for Cape Town, the LGBTQ capital for the continent. He energetically led us around Bo-Kaap and the adjacent city centre explaining bits of history and ordering samples of Cape Malay food (e.g., samoosas, koesister, bobotie, rooibos tea, melktert dessert). Other than being the only overpriced experience of the week, it was a valuable and tasty orientation. Of note, as with champagne, rooibos is legally associated with leaves grown in a specific region of the Western Cape. According to some things I read, the English translation, “red bush” tea, is similarly restricted.
Rugby is the most popular national sport in South Africa. In post-apartheid South Africa, the new, racially integrated “rainbow nation” team won victory in the docudrama “Invictus” about the 1995 Rugby World Cup. This is the movie I haven’t seen where Morgan Freeman plays Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon plays the captain of the historically all-White Springboks. Before this, local Bo-Kaap rugby and cricket legend Fagmie Solomons captained the “non-racial” (aka non-White) South African Rugby Union’s (SARU) victory in 1987 against Namibia, the first time a SARU team played internationally. I walked by his house.
Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden
I met up with Julie and co at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden summer night concert with thousands of other people including young children. The music was lively and the crowd — a sea of white faces — was fun to watch. I knew only one of Julie’s friends in advance of this trip, and I interrogated them all about how they knew one another and their back stories. They were the sweetest, kindest group of handpicked strangers for me to spend several days traipsing with. Thanks, Julie!
Cape Point
The next day, we rented a van to drive to Cape Point at the tip of the peninsula where you can line up for a photo at the Cape of Good Hope. The sudden drop off into the sea where the Indian and Atlantic Ocean’s mix was as dramatic and beautiful as any I’ve seen. Nearby, Simon’s Town has a colony of endangered African penguins for easy viewing at Boulders Beach. It is a pleasant coastal town good for gazing at moored boats. Unfortunately, most of the ice cream shops were closed the Monday we visited.
Robben Island
Three of us set off for the Waterfront to catch the ferry to Robben Island, the one-time maximum-security prison where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years of imprisonment. The tour of the prison was led by a former prisoner. His passion for communicating was curtailed by my comprehension of his accent. I’m not sure what percent of the content I missed, but we did file past Nelson Mandela’s cell. A short bus tour of the rest of the island included a glimpse of the quarry where the prisoners carried rocks back and forth meaninglessly. The quarry was also the place where the leaders of the political opposition to apartheid created an informal school for illiterate convicts in the privy area; the stench of the area kept the guards from inspecting it. Robben Island means “seals” island. I didn’t see any seals, but there were more penguins. Hundreds of years before apartheid, the island was home to a leper colony.
Hiking
Jet lag, an uncomfortable pillow, and unwatched episodes of “Love Is Blind” conspired against high quality sleep all week long. Between insufficient rest and unremitting sun, I struggled with the three strenuous hikes we did together. All under four miles, they were quite steep and exposed. Worried about my rehabbing ankle, I found my greatest physical limitation ended up being not staving off dehydration as aggressively as I should have. I had fatigue and nausea inconsistent with the demands on my legs or lungs. I am now the proud owner of a shoulder pouch for a flip-top water bottle so I no longer need to unclip my bag to reach the water in the side pouches. This small inconvenience was enough to discourage me from drinking. I’m also going to get more serious about electrolyte replenishment. I wish I could have a do-over to test whether these minor adjustments would have had an impact on my heat tolerance.
The three hikes:
Table Mountain (the hardest)
Took the Cable Car down from Table Mountain — many people take it up the mountain as well. I would’ve liked to challenge my knees with the descent, but there was not enough time, and I was completely wiped out from the ascent. The Platteklip Gorge route gives 2,500 feet of elevation in 1.8 miles. It’s no joke.
Keren rates this hike two thumbs down; we were too hot and dehydrated 
Rotating cable car up and down Table Mountain
Elsie’s Peak (the easiest)
Pleasant loop trail to a windy prominence overlooking Fish Hoek valley and False Bay
Nearby Kalk Bay had a nice shopping and restaurant scene that was more hopping than Simon’s Town.
Muizenberg Beach, also nearby, has colorful storage huts and fierce winds. It also featured my first ice cream stop at Kristin’s and first mango purchase at Blue Bird Market.
Elsie’s Peak 
Muizenberg Beach 
Blue Bird Garage Market
Chapman’s Peak (the mediumest, but possibly best)
This challenging hike included the best panoramic payoff per effort and would be particularly worth returning to when the fynbos all along the hills are blooming.
Nearby, we visited the Norval Foundation — a cool sculpture museum that wasn’t as air conditioned as my overheated state required post-hike.
And and
Other hot spots we visited: Old Biscuit Mill for some shopping; Sea Point for international food court and nighttime promenade; Kloof Street hopping with night life; the tiny Art du Cap gallery and the recycled art shop next door.
We gathered one night at one of the Airbnbs to sing happy birthday and play Ultimate Charades. I was first with Julie in Kenya when I learned the game, so it was fitting for us to play it together again with this group. I’m telling you it’s never a bad idea to play Ultimate Charades.
I returned home yesterday ahead of the nor’easter shutting everything down in Boston. A blanket of snow surrounding my cozy home, my family reunited. I’m glad I went – 16 years was a long hiatus, and this was a soft re-entry. I’ve got some thinking to do about what’s next.
Tl;dr
I went to Cape Town for a week. What now?
Good Stays:
Parker Cottage for my first night solo. Very comfortable and included a delightful breakfast.
Purple Pearl Airbnb had four bedrooms, four bathrooms, and two kitchens. This is a great set-up for a group stay with pedestrian access to great cafes and restaurants
Good Eats:
Kombuis for a tasty Cape Malay buffet and gorgeous view of Table Mountain lit up at night.
Table Mountain illuminated Afternoon tea at Mount Nelson Hotel was elegant and delicious. The food was varied and abundant.
Scala Pasta Bar for the best umami-flavored mushroom dish I’ve ever had and the spaghetti alla Scapece with fried baby marrow (i.e., zucchini) and a mint lemon dressing was outstanding.
I would return to Upper Union in a heartbeat to eat whatever the heck this vegetarian tartare was. Every morsel was commanding. I was introduced to kubaneh bread by an Israeli familiar with Yemeni bread and tracked it down at the famed Bakey in Boston just months before they stopped selling it. Criminey!
What the hey is “green tartare”? 
I dunno but gimme every last drop of it! 
Kubaneh bread Moro gelato can withstand hype. It was truly delicious.
Honorable mentions for breakfast bites and coffees: Clarke’s and Rosetta Roastery on Bree Street and the Bo Kaap Deli for smoothies and Cape Malay dishes.
Bo Kaap Deli’s good lattes and smoothies
Logistics:
Splitwise is a helpful application for splintering shared expenses across an admixture of people and calculating the fewest number of final transactions to keep everyone square.
Uber worked really well and was very affordable.
Truly miscellaneous
Heart the Lover was talked up so many times in recent weeks that I forsook my book group book and bought it at the airport before take off and finished it the day of my return. It was emotionally compelling to read and good for a getaway.
Modifications to my hiking set up: shoulder strap water bottle holder and flip top water bottle lid and much lighter weight hiking pants with a thigh pocket for my phone that isn’t blocked by my lumbar buckle.
Met a retired oil rig operator who told me lots of things I didn’t know about the self-contained life on the rig – the gyms replaced the movie theaters! – and about the existence of offshore diamond mining.
I’d remembered some hoopla around boycotting Sabra hummus some time ago because of its Israeli ownership and was surprised to learn that in 2024, PepsiCo acquired full ownership of the company. One of the travelers in our group worked at Sabra for a bunch of years and delighted me with his tale of how unceremonious the process of rekashering an industrial boiler is. The rabbi comes in and flips the switch. Amen.
Squirrels are so rare that the few in Company Garden racing around the imported oak tree have visitors photographing them!
Elizabeth -
What an amazing trip. Thanks for bringing us along.
Your posts brought back memories of our own trip Cape Town years ago, including questions about who's getting exploited by who, and what role we are playing in all of this.
One of the most vivid memories I have was hiking table mountain - specifically walking *down* the endless steps. We'd been walking down steps for about an hour and I checked in with our guide to see how much more we had to go: she told us, oh just another hour and half or so. It was endless. But also awesome.