Cape Town in Three Days: A Land of Contrasts

After a year of living in rural Namibia, Cape Town hit me with a large dose of culture shock. The city seemed, on the surface, to be everything my dusty, northern corner of Namibia was not—cosmopolitan, diverse and teeming with things to do.

My friends and I fell in love with Cape Town immediately. The food was tantalizing, the air was crisp, the mountains were stunning. It was difficult to believe that just a few days prior, my friends and I had been navigating the dusty streets of Ovamboland, and that we now stood in one of the world’s great cities, at the foot of Table Mountain, soaking in the balmy weather, the abundant greenery and the crashing waves.

It is no wonder Cape Town is considered one of the greatest cities on Earth, I remember thinking.

Three Days in Cape Town

There are a million and one things to do in Cape Town. Unfortunately for my friends and I, we were not be able to do them all. Our limited three days in Cape Town meant that we had to pick and choose what we wanted to see and do. After all, Cape Town is largely considered to be the number one place to visit in South Africa. To do the city justice would take weeks, if not months.

Over the course of our three days in the Mother City, we found ourselves continually crossing items off our list—not because we had completed them, but simply because we had no time to fit them into our packed itinerary.

Nonetheless, thanks to the effortless transportation provided by Cape Town’s Hop on Hop off Bus Tours, we were able to pack in a whirlwind visit to some of the city’s most remarkable neighborhoods and beaches.

• The Hop on Hop Off Bus

I’m not usually a proponent of Hop on Hop Off tours. In general, I find that I can navigate cities easily using a mixture of walking and public transportation. But not in Cape Town. Cape Town is one of two places in which I was truly grateful for the ease at which the tours allowed me to navigate the city (the other place being Shanghai). In Cape Town, the tourist bus is so convenient, that my friends and I were even able to access some of the city’s most far-flung attractions.

The Hop on Hop Off Bus in Cape Town consists of four routes: the Red Line, the Blue Line, the Yellow Line and the Purple Line.

The Red Line highlights the essential places that one might visit if they only had a day to explore Cape Town. It goes through the V&A waterfront, past Table Mountain, over Kloof Nek and back up the Atlantic Seaboard past Camps Bay and Clifton Beach.

The Blue Line includes farther destinations, such as the Kirstenbosch Gardens, the Imizamu Yethu Township and Hout Bay.

With the yellow and purple lines, travelers have the opportunity to navigate downtown (yellow) or peek into wine country (purple).

Using a combination of the blue and red lines, we enjoyed a whirlwind visit to South Africa’s splendid coastal city.

Day 1: Delving into Cape Town’s History

On our first day in Cape Town, my friends and I took the opportunity to explore the city’s downtown and visit some of its most eccentric neighborhoods. It was a whirlwind day that gave us an overview of the city’s historical core, while forcing us to think about the forces at play in this diverse and complex part of Africa.

• V&A Waterfront

During our first day, we walked the streets of the V&A Waterfront and gaped at the extravagant malls and boutique shops. Situated on South Africa’s oldest working harbor, the lovely waterfront contains a mixture of residential and commercial buildings.

The waterfront is one of the main places to visit in Cape Town. It is the city’s tourist showpiece—a place where locals and tourists come to eat, shop, and soak in views of Table Mountain.

• Tour of Robben Island

The V&A Waterfront is also the launching point for tours of Robben Island—a UNESCO-recognized prison that once housed the likes of Nelson Mandela, Kgalema Motlanthe and Jacob Zuma.

Our visit to South Africa coincided with a period of tragedy throughout the country. Just a few days prior, the world had received news of the death of a man who was the face of South Africa’s transformation. Nelson Mandela, the country’s nonviolent leader and political activist, passed away at the age of 95 and left a country in mourning.

To reach Robben Island, we took a ferry from the waterfront. Onboard the boat, we admired sweeping views of Cape Town and the surrounding mountains from afar.

The Robben Island prison was founded in the 17th century as an internment place for political prisoners from the Dutch colonies. Later, the island became a leper colony until, in 1961 it was used as a place where political prisoners and opponents of the apartheid regime would be brought to carry out their life sentences.

The comprehensive tour of Robben Island took a better part of the day, but it was a worthwhile and necessary excursion that gave us a greater perspective of life under Apartheid.

Upon reaching land, the passengers from our boat were shuffled onto a bus and taken around the island for a briefing on the sights and significance of Robben Island.

I was amazed by the scope of the island. Though today it is largely a ghost town, Robben Island once contained a functioning school, a permanent population and many of the conveniences of an ordinary town. The bus ride around the island gave us a foundation of the island’s history as well as magnificent views of Table Mountain from across the bay.

The second part of our tour consisted of visiting the high-security prison itself. We were met by a charismatic guide and former political prisoner who took us around and provided us with a human perspective of life inside the prison walls.

My friends and I spent time meandering the empty hallways, reading poems and personal accounts that had been framed on the walls of individual cells and listening to our guide’s accounts of the daily life he experienced as an inmate. At the conclusion of our tour, we were brought to Nelson Mandela’s prison cell. In light of his recent death, his cell was adorned with candles, flowers and newspaper clippings.

During the remainder of our stay in Cape Town’s ritzier areas, our experience in the township kept our perspectives in check.

• Kirstenbosch Gardens

My friends and I finished our second day in Cape Town with a visit to the sprawling Kirstenbosch Gardens. The Kirstenbosch gardens are among the most magnificent worldwide. They showcase indigenous flora from five of South Africa’s biomes and are a wonderful place for a casual stroll or for an afternoon picnic at the foot of Table Mountain.

While standing at the base of a mountain, among the artistic arrangements of colorful plants, one would never know that they were smack in the middle of one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities—much like a visitor to Hout Bay could be completely unaware of the Imizamo Yethu township just a few paces away.

With two solid days of sightseeing behind us and only one full day left to explore, we hesitantly scratched items off of our list and focused on maximizing the time we had left, prioritizing what we deemed to be most important.

Day 3: Exploring Cape Town’s Nature with the Red Bus Line

Cape Town is unique in that it is both an urban retreat and an outdoor escape. Defined by its beaches and mountains, it is a city blessed with a one-of-a-kind setting.

Unlike the lingering polarity between race and socioeconomic status in Cape Town, the opposing forces of nature and industry have found a way to integrate beautifully into the landscape of the city.

• Table Mountain

No visit to Cape Town would be quite complete without a climb to the top of Table Mountain, so we decided to spend the beginning of our third day in the city with a stunning and arduous trek up to the summit.

Though I like to consider myself an experienced hiker, the truth is that my year of living in Onantsi whipped me out of shape faster than I would ever like to admit. Climbing the mountain proved to be a strenuous ordeal. I wanted to attribute this difficulty to the weather conditions, my unaccommodating footwear or something else out of my control, but could not. I was simply out of shape and keeping up with my friends proved to be a challenge.

Nonetheless, in order to keep up with my friends, I made it up the hill rather quickly. In fact, the hike only took us about half of the suggested time.

Now, looking back, I wish I’d taken a few more moments to soak in the fantastic views.

      

On the day we climbed Table Mountain, the wind was so fierce that I could feel it lashing against my face, tousling my hair and drying out my eyes. At one point, it even blew my sunglasses right off my face, resulting in one cracked lens and another that flew straight through the air and disappeared halfway down the mountainside.

The wind we experienced on our vertical climb, however, was nothing compared to the gusty blows upon the table top. At first, we tried to fight through the cold and took some time to appreciate the stunning views of the beaches, coastline and Cape Peninsula. From the top, we could see many of Cape Town’s neighborhoods and beaches. We admired the craggy, green mountains around us, the jagged coastline and the azure waters.

Standing at the top of Table Mountain, I felt far removed from the hustle and bustle of the city. The dramatic scenery reminded made me of an urban version of Lesotho-by-the Sea. I imagined how nice it would have been to spend an afternoon with a picnic lunch atop the mountain, soaking in the views and watching the thin layer of clouds cascade down the mountainside and into the City Bowl.

Despite the beautiful view, however, it was only about half an hour before the biting cold got the better of us and had us running back down the mountain in a hurry.

• Signal Hill

Though we spent a few hours that evening experiencing the pulsing nightlife of Long Street, I feel that my adventure with my fellow volunteers effectively ended here, at the top of Signal Hill, while the sun was setting over the Atlantic Ocean and drenching the surrounding mountains in golden hues.

***

South Africa is a land of contrasts, and Cape Town is a microcosm of the dynamics at play in this varied country. It is at once a city of prominent architecture and magnificent nature—a place where a fusion of architectural styles from different epochs collides with mountains, beaches and forests.  It is Western yet African, historical yet modern. It is a city where rich and poor live side by side, yet isolated in their own realities. A city with racial divides between black and white are still quite evident, despite progressive laws that have abolished segregation.

Yet, as the elements of society and nature have meshed to form a varied and dynamic city, I believe that, so too, will the polarities between races and classes fade over time. The toughest battles for equality and justice have already been fought and the elements for a harmonious future are there.

It is now up to the next generation of South Africans to see it happen.