South Africa in One Month
Exclusive extracts from, face with no name Full version available in June 2016
“Visiting Robben Island was a number one on our list of ‘to-do’s’ in Cape Town. Please, can I recommend that you get to a pharmacy and purchase travel calm, motion sickness or ‘I’m a sensitive Sally and get sick at the drop of a hat’ tablets. Try chewing on a clove or eating fresh ginger like you’re stoking your digestive fire and supporting a healthy gut, what ever your method ensure you do it. After an hour’s ferry ride and succumbing to the cruelty of the waves we arrived to a sweet aroma and thousands of black sea birds crouching on the boulders. By sweet I mean foul and by aroma I mean seal urine. However, somehow all of your problems seemed to disappear as you felt the heaviness on this rocky outcrop of concrete and barbed wire. Upon disembarking we were greeted by Sipho Msomi a former Robben Island inmate who was incarcerated at this prison from 1984 to 1988 for being recognised as a young organiser of the African National Congress. Although the haunting words that Mandela first recalled on arrival “This is the Island. Here you will die” were floating around in our heads, we couldn’t pull away from Sipho and the experience he endured throughout his sentence. The question was raised on if it was difficult for Sipho to return on a day to day basis as a guide — it made me squirm as I cannot imagine a response other than “of course”, yet his answer was so inspiring. After his obvious reservations, he gave us a strong sense of how the island has been transformed into a beacon of African pride and spirit. It is almost impossible to put into words of what it is like to walk around Robben Island. A place where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 of his 27 years behind bars during Africa’s apartheid era is now truly a symbol of the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. This is what these former inmates have to be proud of.”
“ From Table Mountain we made our way to the Cape Peninsula National Park where we had our first wild African animal experience. I’m not going to count that one zebra (could have been a goat) on the side of the N2 highway 400m away in Cape Town. We took a day trip and drove the whole Cape, stopping off at Boulders Beach and playing from a far with the small black and white locals. After parking we took a left on the beach and were fronted with a small colony of African penguins who weren’t fussed by our presence and let our photo op’s take place. Suddenly realising we hadn’t actually entered the park correctly, we paid a small levy and were herded onto a boardwalk with a hundred coach tourists sporting their oversized cameras. We kept to ourselves out of fear for a stampede and let them experience what we just had in a far less intimate way. We decided to leave the viewing point early and made our way to the beach, It truly does have the name Boulders Beach for a reason and it was absolutely stunning so we basked in the ambiance until it was time to move on.
We continued driving through the Cape along the coast, stopping to hike to the lighthouse at Cape Point. The scenery, breathtaking — and there was an opportunity to hike even further to the most south easterly point of Africa. Yet, after climbing Mount Everest . . .Apologies, I mean, Table Mountain at 6am that morning my feet were about to remove themselves from my legs and kick my own ass, so we settled for the view from the lighthouse. On our drive out of Cape Peninsula National Park we encountered a wild Ostrich and many Baboons. Like the snap happy tourists we are, we stopped and held up traffic to take photo’s of animals we were about to experience at much closer proximity as the trip progressed. Chapman’s Peak Drive took us directly back to our apartment in the heart of Cape Town and it was by far one of the most scenic drives we had ever taken part of. All I needed was a Ferrari on a lazy Sunday afternoon with my blonde locks tailing in the wind and you’d have yourself a South African tourism commercial. ”
Exclusive extracts from, face with no name
South Africa in One Month 4 Part Blog Post
Full version available in June 2016 — www.facewithnoname.weebly.com, coming soon.
Originally published at nomadapp.co on May 14, 2016.
