South Africa

On February 29, Leap Day, we went over the Orange River and crossed the border from Namibia into South Africa. Writing this so many months later, I don't remember anything noteworthy about our final border crossing, and I'm really grateful that I can say that, especially since so many of our border crossings had been challenging, to say the least.

This was the last long travel day of the trip, since we were officially finishing up the following day, shocking as that was. We traveled about 8 hours in the truck to the Cederberg region, which is a beautiful mountainous region of South Africa that is also well-known for wine-making. Our first night in South Africa and the second-last of the trip, we camped at a winery and got to taste some delicious wines, and I also celebrated visiting my 30th country--which, I have to admit, is an accomplishment I'm really proud of. It was also our last night as a group, which I spent drinking with friends and dancing into the night.

Wine tasting in my 30th country

Kate and I in South Africa

Alex, Eva, and I should clearly be models

The final day of our tour, we continued on to Cape Town, our final stop and honestly the initial reason I took this trip. Cape Town, for me, was the gateway to my interest in traveling to Africa, and the more research I did, the more I wanted to see on that big, beautiful continent. But Cape Town was always my endgame, and I was thrilled to finally be getting there, after more than six weeks and 6,335 miles traveled.

Our trusty truck, which had broken down and been revived and seen countless laughs and spilled drinks and card games and naps over the past six weeks, dropped us off at a hostel. Some of us were staying there and others had other plans, but this was the end of our time together as a group. Kate and Alex had a different place to stay but we weren't ready to say goodbye, so we made plans to see each other again before we left Cape Town. After many hugs and promises to stay in touch with various members of our group, I set off for Table Mountain with two other women from the group, Cat and Manuela.

The three of us took an Uber to the foot of the mountain and then the cable car to the top (It's possible to hike to the top of Table Mountain but if you know me at all, then you know I had no interest in doing that). The cable car was unique for me because it rotates throughout the trip, so you get a 365 degree view of the surrounding area on your way up and down. Admittedly, I'm a sucker for a beautiful view anyway, but the views from Table Mountain were unparalleled.

Going up to Table Mountain in the cable car

At the top!

On the other side of Table Mountain

Views for days

View of Cape Town from Table Mountain

Descending in the cable car

Later that night, a group of us that included Kate and Alex and my fearless tour guide Eva met for dinner at the Fat Cactus, a delicious Mexican restaurant that Eva recommended based on her past experiences in Cape Town. It was great to see them but I was having a hard time letting go so I assured the three of them that I'd see them again. I slept very well that night in an actual bed in my hostel before heading out early to explore more of Cape Town as well as the Cape Peninsula.

First thing in the morning, I got on a hop-on/hop-off bus, which is one of my favorite ways to see a city, especially a sprawling one like Cape Town that's too big to do justice on foot. I took the downtown loop and was blown away by how beautiful the city is.

Views of Cape Town

I got off the bus at the stop from where my next tour was leaving, which was to see Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope, and visit the penguin colony at Boulders Beach. I got to get really close to some of the penguins, and they are even cuter in person.

The rocks behind me and to my right is the Cape of Good Hope, the most south-western point in Africa

Cape Point

From my starting point in Nairobi to the Cape, it was about 6,375 miles (give or take)

Boulders Beach Penguin Colony

Making new friends!

I apologize in advance for the audio on this video; it was extremely windy that day at Boulders Beach

The bus dropped us back off in downtown Cape Town and I set off to explore some more, this time in Bo-Kaap, a famous neighborhood known for its colorful houses. It contains the largest concentration of pre-1850s architecture in South Africa, and it's the oldest residential neighborhood in Cape Town.

Bo-Kaap

Sporting some sun burn in Bo-Kaap

Bo-Kapp is also the historical center of Cape Malay culture in Cape Town. Cape Malay originally referred to enslaved Javanese people transported by the Dutch East India Trading Company who lived on the Cape Peninsula, but it has kind of evolved to refer to any Muslims who live on the peninsula, which is majority Christian. That said, their food is also famous, so once I was done taking selfies with the bright, beautiful homes, I went to the Biesmiellah Restautant to try some authentic cuisine. I asked the server what she recommended, and she told me to try "bobotie," which was described on the menu as "a sweet-sour lean beef mince stir fried with fresh herbs, spices, and topped with a milk egg glaze, and served with sweet yellow rice." The dish was in fact as unique as it sounds, and while I don't know that I would want to eat it all the time, I'm really glad I tried something different.

Once I finished eating, I got in touch with Kate and Alex, and I went to meet them at the tapas restaurant where they were finishing up dinner. We also got in touch with Eva and went to meet her at a bar where we had a few drinks and a few more laughs. Our plans didn't match up for the next day so unfortunately, we realized that this was the last time I'd see Kate and Alex. After six weeks of unforgettable memories, it was so hard to say goodbye to them, but I swear I'm going to visit them in Australia someday (Hopefully sooner rather than later but who knows, thanks to Corona).

March 3 was my last day in Cape Town, so I got an early start and had breakfast at Truth Coffee in District Six, where I met Katarina, my tent buddy for those 6 weeks, and Rebecca, who was also on the tour with us. Rebecca and Katarina met on the tour but they were both Swedish and both didn't have any travel plans past "we'll see what happens after Cape Town" so they were sticking together.

The three of us decided to go to the District Six museum together, which details the removal of 60,000 residents during the 1970s by the apartheid regime. The neighborhood housed primarily black, middle-class families, but there were also multiracial families, indigenous people, Cape Malay people, and white people. A cosmopolitan, polytheistic, multicultural neighborhood certainly could not be permitted to thrive under apartheid, so the residents were forcibly relocated due to the area being a "notorious hotbed of vices," according to the government, and because the races needed to kept separate "for everyone's safety." District Six was declared a whites-only neighborhood on February 11, 1966.

District Six Museum

One of the amazing things about the DIstrict Six museum is that we were guided through it by a man named Joe who had lived there with his family when he was a child, and he painted a very different picture from what the government said about the area: a neighborhood of decent, hard-working families where people looked out for one another and were able to keep good, middle-class jobs because of the neighborhood's proximity to center city Cape Town, the harbor, and the rural areas near Table Mountain. However, 60,000 members of those hardworking families were relocated to the Cape Flats, a township complex located 15 miles outside the city, and everything in District Six was bulldozed except places of worship. Joe told us about the complete loss of community and the disorientation of being thrust into a new place when his family had lived in District Six for generations. He had friends and neighbors he'd known all his life that he lost track of overnight. He also explained that moving 15 miles away combined with the destruction of the economic heart of District Six (since neighborhood businesses were also bulldozed) led to rampant unemployment and crime waves in the neighborhoods where they were relocated. Joe told us that the impact of these racist policies are still widely felt today, since the racial geography of Cape Town hasn't changed much since the end of apartheid. Most of District Six remains undeveloped to this day, as a memorial for the culture of an entire neighborhood that was lost. As a person who grew up in a country that struggles with the echoes of past racist policies (as well as our current struggles with racial inequality), I was deeply moved by visiting this museum, and I think it was the most important thing I did in Cape Town.

After that amazing tour with Joe, I parted ways with Katarina and Rebecca and I finished the hop-on/off tour of the downtown area that I had started the day before. I then got on a different route that they called the Mini Peninsula tour, that drove by the many beautiful beaches and suburban towns around Cape Town. I hopped off the bus at Sea Point and had lunch at the Mojo Market, which was like an upscale food court, and had a delicious bowl of pasta and then some gelato. I hopped back on and rode the bus to the V&A Waterfront, and explored down there for awhile before getting on the ferry out to Robben Island.

A beautiful bank building in downtown Cape Town

The swankiest hotel in Cape Town, where the likes of Winston Churchill and John Lennon have stayed

On the Cape Peninsula tour

There were beautiful sights around every corner

At the V&A waterfront

The Robben Island ferry terminal

The history of Robben Island was a lot longer than I realized, since all I knew about it was that Nelson Mandela was imprisoned there. Fun fact: the name Robben Island means Seal Island in Afrikaans. Since the end of the 17th century, Robben Island has served as a prison, primarily for political prisoners. It was, however, a leper colony for several years. On a related note, the lepers who lived there built a church on the island, and they allow a certain number of couples to get married there on Valentine's Day every year, in case you were looking for the world's most romantic spot to tie the knot. But you'd better get in line because of course there's a waiting list. Who wouldn't want to get married on a prison island?

View of Cape Town and Table Mountain from Robben Island

Similar to my experience at the District Six museum, we were guided through the prison by a former political prisoner, who got locked up when he was a teenager because he and his father didn't agree with apartheid. Our tour guide was imprisoned after Nelson Mandela had already moved to Pollsmoor Prison, so he didn't meet him, but he knew many of his contemporaries. And he was able to show us the cell that Mandela slept in for 18 years.

Nelson Mandela's cell

An interesting thing that I never considered before visiting Robben Island that our tour guide told us was that due to the nature of the political prisoners, many of whom were really intelligent, educated, academically-inclined men, he said he learned more in prison with them than he probably would have if he was at university.

Once we finished the tour, I took the ferry back to Cape Town and ate dinner from another fancy food court (I really love them because you can choose different types of food!) by the waterfront, and then took an Uber back to my hostel. I was flying to Vienna out of Cape Town that night, and my flight left a little after midnight. At the hostel, I grabbed my bags and said a final goodbye to Eva, who was also staying there and came to see me off. I hope one day, Eva, Kate, Alex, and I can all meet and have a fabulous time in Australia, but visiting Eva in Germany (which remains one of my favorite countries in the world) or wherever she finds herself leading tours would be no hardship for me!

I left for the airport about 3.5 hours before my flight was leaving since it was an international flight and I wanted to make sure I wasn't hustling through a huge airport.

Well, the joke was on me. I was expecting a rather large airport since Cape Town is such a major city. In fact, it only took about 15 minutes to get there and I was through security and passport control in literally about 10 minutes, so I spent the next three hours on the phone with my sister, eagerly waiting to board the plane so that I could go to sleep. I was exhausted by my marathon 3 days in Cape Town--and by the 7 weeks I'd spent in Africa. I had a direct flight to Vienna, and I brought NyQuil with me, so I was hoping I could sleep through as much of the flight as possible, since it was a 12-hour flight. But thankfully for me, I think I was actually asleep before the plane took off, and by the time I woke up, Vienna was only a couple of hours away.