Cape Town and Table Mountain, FF Day 2, WTRDs 6 of 36

Cape Town and Table Mountain

We have been touring Cape Town in a whirl of activities and with new friends.  So much so that it has been difficult to spend any time writing,  Load shading hasn't been helping with internet connections. In fact it has hampered a couple of activities, particularly the one where we visited the African Penguin colony and we stood in line for an hour in a queue with our host coordinator trying to pay for the whole group with a credit card to no available as the Internet bottomed out, then everyone scrounging for cash and finally getting through the entry gates.  Here are some of the photos with captions for the last three days:

Up and Views from Table Mountain.  Beautiful Clear Day

It is a spectacular, cloudless, still morning.  We got an early start and drove -up to the midpoint of Table Mountain where we despite our early 1/2 hour arrival still had queue before boarding the cable car to the table top of the mountain.  

Millions of years ago, the entire sea bed rose up creating a flat mountain top .  The top
soil has eroded   We had 45 minutes to hike about, enjoying panoramic views of the city and seascapes.  

The Interior of the Cable Car revolves so that passengers have 360 degree view

Our new friend Eleanor from Texas.

Around Town and the Slave Lodge

Our tribe descended the mountain and drove into the city to visit the Slave Lodge, where slaves from Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia, and India were brought to serve and build the Dutch East India colony. The slave lodge was where the slaves slept in abysmal conditions and transported daily to their slave assignments in ragged clothing to tend to gardens, fields, shipyards, homes, and brothels.

The mixture of slave and master interbreeding, created the colored people in South Africa.  Unlike America, "colored" is not a derogatory description.  It is a multiethnic description that that distinguished mixed race people, a step below the whites and a step above the pure African "Blacks".  Many of the early female slaves that were African, Indian, and Malaysian were assigned to brothels to service the Dutch sailors going around the Cape.  The “colored” or mixed race became the second class, and the blacks became the bottom class of slaves.   The “authentic test” for determining who was colored and who was black according to our host, was the pencil test.  If you could hold a pencil in your hair above your ear because of  the tight curls, you were black.  If it dropped, you were colored. Unbelievable!

After apartheid was ended, everyone was given their freedom to live and work wherever they wanted, but the reality is that it is next to impossible for someone who is is in stark poverty to opportune themselves into another stratification.  Their living quarters, knowledge about life, education and opportunity for education, and lack of unskilled job prospects are strangling. The black may not have masters, but they are still slaves to a system that keeps them poor and ignorant. 

We finish Day 2 with lunch in a garden.  Lunch service was quite late and a walk around Bo-Kaap was eliminated.  This area of Islamic influence and traditional Dutch Colonial homes are brightly painted in vivid colors.  I was disappointed as I looked forward to some photography and walking time in this area of Cape Town.

Nelson Mandela Statue on Steps of Court House

All is Well with the Worrall TravelR's in Cape Town South Africa