Cape Town, The Bo-Kaap

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On the slopes of Signal Hill, the Bo-Kaap is one of Cape Town's oldest and most fascinating residential areas.

Its streets are characterized by brightly coloured nineteenth-century Dutch and Georgian terraces, which conceal a network of alleyways that are the arteries of its Muslim  community.

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The Bo-Kaap harbours its own strong identity, made all the more unique by the destruction of District Six, with which it had much in common.

A particular dialect of Afrikaans is spoken here, although it is steadily being eroded by English.


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Long-time residents have sold off family properties, and, with the closing of a landmark halal butchery, the area is set for substantial change.

A number of trendy outsiders have moved in, and some guesthouses have started up, capitalizing on the outstanding central city position, poised between Long Street distractions and the buzzing Waterkant district.


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Bo-Kaap residents are descended from dissidents and slaves imported by the Dutch in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

They became known collectively as "Cape Malay", although most originated from Africa, India, Madagascar and Sri Lanka, with fewer than one percent actually from Malaysia.

The easiest way to get to the Bo-Kaap is by foot along Wale Street, which trails up from the south end of Adderley Street and across Buitengragt, to become the main drag of the Bo-Kaap.


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Cape Town, Castle of Good Hope

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From the outside, South Africa's oldest official buildings looks somewhat miserable, and its position on Darling Street, behind the train station and city-bus terminal, does nothing to dispel this.

Nevertheless, the Castle of Good Hope is well worth the entrance free; inside, a meticolous ten-year restoration has returned the decor to the British Regency style introduced in 1798.


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But the Castle has also shaken off a dour historical image, and has some fine contemporary exhibitions.

Completed in 1679, the castle replaced Van Riebeeck's earlier mud and timber fort, which stood on the site of the Grand Parade.
It was built in accordance with seventeenth-century European principles of fortification, comprising strong bastions from which the outside walls could be protected by crossfire.


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The entrance is a fine exemple of seventeenth-century Dutch classicism and, in the tower above, the bell cast in Amsterdam in 1697 still hangs from its original wooden beams.
For 150 years, the castle remained the symbolic heart of the Cape administration, and the centre of social and economic life.


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Inside the castle are three interesting collections.
The Military Museum has displays on the conflicts that dogged the early settlement; the Secunde's House has furnishings, paintings and objets d'art that filled the living space of the deputy governor; and the William Fehr Collection, one of the country's most important exhibits of decorative arts, includes paintings of the settlement, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Dutch and Indonesian furniture, and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Chinese and Japanese porcelain.


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Guided tours are useful for orientation and cover the main features of the castle.
In the elegant courtyard there is a very pleasant teashop, with Table Mountain looming over the west wall.


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Cape Town, Two Oceans Aquarium

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One of Cape Town's highlights, the Two Oceans Aquarium showcases the Cape's unique marine environment, where the warm Indian Ocean mingles with the cold Atlantic.


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Among the highlights of the aquarium is the shark feeding every Sunday at 3 pm, when you can watch raggies (ragged-tooth sharks) being hand-fed by divers.


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The basement houses the AfriSam Children's Centre, a good place to keep kids occupied with puppet shows and creative activities, such as making mobiles and fridge magnets from recycled materials, and where you can watch a group of Cape fur seals frolicking underwater.


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Cape Town, World of Birds

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The World of Birds is home to more than three thousand birds, housed in surprisingly pleasant and peaceful walk-through aviaries, and four hundred animals in cage; allow at least two hours for a visit.


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The birds include indigenous species such as cranes, vultures, ostriches and pelicns, as well as a number of feathered exotics.


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The large walk-in monkey jungle includes among its inhabitants cute squirrel monkeys that visitors can handle and play with.


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There's a café serving light lunches, or you can picnic at the Flamingo Terrace.

Children are well catered for with a couple of playground areas, an feeding time for the penguins, pelicans and birds of prey are a likely winner.


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The setting with lush gardens and a mountainous backdrop makes for e very tranquil outing.


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Cape Town, Groot Constantia & Klein Constantia

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Groot Constantia is the largest wine estate in Constantia and the one most geared to tourists.

Its big pull is that it retains the rump of Van der Stel's original estate, as well as the original buildings, though its portrayal of life in a seventeenth-century colonial chateau makes scant reference to the slave labour that underpinned its operations.


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The Manor House, a quintessential Cape Dutch building, was Van der Stel's original home, modified at the end pf the eighteenth century by the French architect Thibault.

Walking straight through it, down the ceremonial axis, you'll come to the cellar, fronted with a carved pediment, depicting a riotous bacchanalia, which represents fertility.

The substantial grounds of Groot Constantia also make for for good walks.


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Smaller in scale than Groot Constantia, Klein Constantia offers free wine tasting in less regimented conditions than at the bigger estate and, although the buildings are far humbler, the setting is equally beautiful.


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Something of a curiosity is its Vin de Constance, the re-creation of an eighteenth-century Constantia wine that was the favourite of Napoleon, Frederick the Great and Bismarck.

It's a delicious dessert wine, packaged in a replica of the original bottle, and makes a unique souvenir.

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Cape Town, Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens

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Five kilometres south of Rondebosh, the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens are one of the planet's great natural treasure houses, a status acknowledged in 2004 when they became part of SouthAfrica's sixth UNESCO World Heritage Site, the first botanical garden in the world to achieve this.


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The listing recognizes the international significance of the fynbos plant kingdom that predominates here.

Kirstenbosh is the oldest and largest botanical garden in South Africa, created in 1895 by Cecil Rhodes, whose camphor and fig trees are still here.


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Today, over 22,000 indigenous plants, and a research unit and library, attract researchers and botanists from all over the world.

There's  nursery selling local plants, while characteristic Cape plants, found nowhere else in the world, are cultivated on the slopes.

The gardens are magnificent, glorying in lush shrubs and exuberant blooms.


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The gardens trails off from the lower gardens, which are formally organized, into wild vegetation, covering a huge expanse of the rugged eastern slopes and wooded ravines of Table Mountains.

The setting is quite breathtaking ..... this is a great place to have tea and stroll around gazing up at the mountain, or to wander along the paths, which meander steeply to the top with no fences cutting off the way.


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Two popular paths, starting from the Contour Path above Kirstenbosh, are Nursery Ravine and Skeleton Gorge; note that there have been muggings in the isolated reaches of Kirstenbosh and on Table Mountain, and hikers are advised to walk in groups and avoid carrying valuables.


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Cape Town, District Six Museum

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Few places in Cape Town speak more eloquently of the effect of apartheid on the day-to-day lives of ordinary people than the District Six Museum.

Situated on the northern boundary of District Six, on the corner of Buitenkant and Albertus streets, the museum occupies the former Central Methodist Mission Church, which offered solidarity and ministry to the victims of forced removals right up to the 1980s, and became a venue for anti.apartheid gatherings.



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Today, it houses a series of fascinating displays that include everyday household items and tools of trades, such as hairdressing implements, as well as documentary photographs, which evoke the lives of the individuals who once lived here.

Occupying most of the floor is a huge map of District Six as it was, annotated by former residents, who describe their memories, reflections and incidents associated with places and buildings that no longer exist. 
There's also an almost complete collection of original street signs, secretly retrieved at the time of demolition by the man entrusted with dumping them into Table Bay.


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