SoetKaroo

Cape of Good Hope, 21 st of August 2018 – On the southern tip of Table Mountain National Park is Cape of Good Hope. Ever since primary school, this name has mysteriously attracted me. Before we go to that mythical spot, we drive to Boulders Beach, home to a penguin colony. These birds are great fun to watch, the way they clumsily come out of the water, changing from top-level swimmers to helpless walkers. For a moment, I doubt if I am in Disneyworld or in a nature reserve. Tourists from all over the world want to see a glimpse of these ‘Jackass’ penguins. Yes, that is their name! Italians elbow their way through the crowd to reach the best photo spot, the Japanese politely wait their turn and nod their heads off if you let them pass. Further down the beach there is a spot where you can ‘swim with the penguins’… I remember a ranger who told me that tourists are not that bad. Without them, endangered species would never get any attention, nor the money to set up conservation programs...

Cape Town, 21th of August 2018 – Today we are walking up Table Mountain, 515 years after Portuguese explorer Antonio de Saldanha. He got separated from his fleet and needed a lookout point to see if his mates had sailed off without him. Scary thought! Saldanha climbed up the narrow gorge and spotted his fellow seamen. During his ascent he saw the sweet water flowing down, great discovery for the rest of their voyage. The narrow Platteklip Gorge is the most direct way to walk up Table Mountain. It is made of rock-steps and very steep, but with an average fitness you can do it in less than 2 hours. You don’t need a map, you start and just look up all the time, following the serpentine. We leave our car at the ranger post and take the bus to the lower cable station. From there we walk to the starting point. A ranger joins us and we have a chat. “Where are you from?” followed by the “Aha Kevin De Bruyne” sentence. “In Table Mountain National Park, there are only fifty rangers, we patrol ...

Cape Town, 20 th of August 2018 – Bartolomeo Dias in1488 and Vasco da Gama eleven years later, were the first Europeans to sight the Cape. The Portuguese, however, had little interest in the Cape and it would take another 150 years before the Dutch started colonising it. Bucket listed by so many, we want to experience it by ourselves. We sleep in Seapoint, west of Signal Hill. On the motorway, we drive past the ‘Groote Schuur Hospital’, where Christiaan Barnard performed the first heart transplant. Then we see the Cape Town Stadium, where many matches of the Football World Championships of 2010 were played. Can you remember the deafening sound of the vuvuzela’s? The Spanish beat the Dutch, the final was played in Soccer City in Johannesburg, Iniesta scored. We check into the Glen Boutique Hotel and we are offered an upgrade in the annex building. To our amazement, we get the Mandela Suite on the top floor of a ‘belle époque’ house. Paintings of Nelson Mandela everywhere and a librar...

From Camdeboo to Prince Albert, 19 th of August – We are heading back to Cape Town and have to find a nice village for an overnight stop. We drive hours through the Great Karoo on the R61 without seeing a living soul. Except maybe a lonely sheep grazing on next to nothing. The wind blows from the north and I have to keep both hands on the wheel to stay on the road. My fuel gauge reads almost empty and in Beaufort West, we decide to fill up the tank. Strangely enough, the brand new petrol station is attracting a strange mix of people, who seem to spend their Sunday in and around the shop. We are the only whites. The service station attendant is very friendly and we small talk. A young woman with a young boy on her arm starts asking me for money and when I refuse, she puts the boy on the ground and tries to convince me to donate. The little boy starts stroking the car tyres with his hands in a circular movement. His palms are jet black. His mother walks to the other side of the car an...

Camdeboo, 19th of August 2018 – When we wake up, the sun pierces through an opening in the curtains. It is as if someone shines with a flashlight on the wall. Our room at Drostdy is a tastefully renovated ‘freed’ slave cabin. Not only the indigenous black population had to do slave labour, also people from nowadays Angola and India were imported to work. I need further reading on the complex history of slavery in South Africa. We drive to Camdeboo National Park, just outside of Graaff-Reinet. Every year 100 000 people visit this park in the Eastern Cape Karoo. The rangers take their check in and check out procedure very seriously. Poachers try everything to get into the parks, even the official way. They use false identities, stay behind and go for the rhino horns and elephant tusks. The volcanic dolerite columns are 200 million years old and are in stark contrast with the endless flat Karoo behind. There is a tarred road to the top of the Valley of Desolation and the views from here...