CAPE TOWN is southern
Africa's most beautiful, most
romantic and most visited city.
Indeed, few urban centres anywhere
can match its setting along the
mountainous
Cape Peninsula
spine, which slides into the
Atlantic Ocean. By far the most
striking - and famous - of its
sights is
Table Mountain ,
frequently shrouded by clouds, and
rearing up from the middle of the
city.
More than a scenic backdrop,
Table Mountain is the solid core of
Cape Town, dividing the city into
distinct zones with public gardens,
wilderness, forests, hiking routes,
vineyards and desirable residential
areas trailing down its lower
slopes. Standing on the tabletop,
you can look north for a giddy view
of the city centre , its
docks lined with matchbox ships.
Looking west, beyond the mountainous
Twelve Apostles, the drop is sheer
and your eye will sweep across
Africa's priciest real estate,
clinging to the slopes along the
chilly but spectacularly beautiful
Atlantic seaboard. Turning south,
the mountainsides are forested and
several historic vineyards and the
marvellous Botanical Gardens creep
up the lower slopes. Beyond the
oak-lined suburbs of Newlands and
Constantia lies the warmer False
Bay seaboard , which curves
around towards Cape Point .
Finally, relegated to the grim
industrial east, are the coloured townships
and black ghettos ,
spluttering in winter under the
smoky pall of coal fires - your
stark introduction to Cape Town when
driving in.
To appreciate Cape Town you need
to spend time outdoors , as
Capetonians do, hiking, picnicking
or sunbathing, or often choosing
mountain bikes in preference to cars
and turning adventure activities
into an obsession. Sailboarders from
around the world head for Table Bay
for some of the world's best
windsurfing, and the brave (or
unhinged) jump off Lion's Head and
paraglide down close to the Clifton
beachfront. But the city offers
sedate pleasures as well, along its
hundreds of paths and 150km of
beaches.
Cape Town's rich urban texture is
immediately apparent in its diverse architecture
: an indigenous Cape Dutch style,
rooted in the Netherlands, finds its
apotheosis in the Constantia wine
estates, which were themselves
brought to new heights by French
refugees in the seventeenth century;
Muslim slaves, freed in the
nineteenth century, added their
minarets to the skyline; and the
English, who invaded and freed these
slaves, introduced Georgian and
Victorian buildings. In the tightly
packed terraces of twentieth-century
Bo-Kaap and the tenements of
District Six, coloured descendants
of slaves evolved a unique brand of
jazz, which is still played in the
Cape Flats and some city-centre
clubs.
Sadly, when most travellers
expound the unarguable delights of
the city, they are referring only to
genteel Cape Town - the former
whites-only areas. The harsh reality
for most Capetonians is one of
crowded shantytowns ,
sky-high murder rates, taxi wars,
racketeering and gangland terror. In
the late 1990s this violence has
been characterized by a complex and
bloody war between coloured gangs
and Pagad (People Against
Gangsterism and Drugs), a Cape Flats
organization that started with the
ostensible aim of stamping out
crime. Fortunately, this conflict
has remained largely restricted to
the Cape Flats and isn't something
tourists need be unduly concerned
about. Having said that, petty crime
is nonetheless a problem in central
Cape Town, but it's a risk you can
minimize by taking a few simple
precautions.
