SunSquare Cape Town City Bowl Hotel, Cape Town
28 Dec 2025-1 Jan 2026
Cape Town is a city of extremes. We’re here over the summer/ christmas/ new year’s holidays, so the locals are bringing out the toys for boys. I’ve seen a few Bentleys, a McLaren, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Porsches—along with plenty of BMWs and Mercedes. Even a couple of recent mustang GT’s. I’ve also seen more AC Cobra replicas here than anywhere else: six so far in two days. Backdraft Racing, a major manufacturer of these replicas, is based in Durban, which may explain their prevalence.
At the same time, we’ve seen shantytowns that are nothing more than bits of wood, cloth and sheet metal. There are even more permanent shantytowns that have electricity with a surprizing number of satellite dishes perched on the tin roofs. We’ve seen groups of men gathered at stoplights outside town, hoping someone will pick them up for a few hours of work at just a couple of dollars an hour. I have heard that many of them are immigrants from other south african countries… although many countries at the moment put too much blame on immigrants for their social problems. Perhaps there is the same scapegoating going on here too.
We also continue to hear about violence and theft in some areas of the city. One person in the previous OAT travel group was knocked over and bumped her head badly while standing outside our hotel, when someone tried to grab the necklace she was wearing. It took an hour for an ambulance to arrive and three hours for the police. Our guide, Thabiso, said the thief was caught, but will likely not be charged because the victim will no longer be in the country to testify. But doesn’t that make tourists especially attractive targets?
In 1964, at his trial, when he was sentenced for inciting violence and sabotage, Nelson Mandela concluded his three-hour speech by saying, “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities…”
Apartheid is over, but equal opportunity has not yet arrived. The discrimination today is less about skin color and more about economics and education. There is a lost generation from the apartheid era that will never have equal opportunities because they lack both education and the financial resources needed to secure better employment. Things are on the right track, and they are far better than they once were. But this is a problem that will take generations to resolve, much like the residential school fiasco in Canada.
OK – time to switch gears and get off my soapbox. I’m pleased to say that with the walking we have been doing, I think we’re finally using more calories than we are eating. It’s a long road ahead to compensate for 1 month of overeating.
As tourists, we’ve visited the District 6 museum, walked through the marina district, gone to the top of Table Mountain (2.5hr lineup!) , driven the coast road to Cape of Good Hope, seen penguins in Simon’s Town and looked at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical garden. We had signed up for the Stellenbosch wine tour but OAT cancelled it because we were the only three people that had signed up and they wanted 4. Then we tried to go to Robben Island instead but it was sold out. Thabiso told us to buy tickets for a later day that was not sold out. He got the ticket office to switch them to the sold out time… but they switched it to the 30th not 31st and we did not notice until we were turned away at the front of the line. So we’ve been missing a lot in Cape Town that we wanted to do.
Happy New Year! We ate kudu, ostrich, springbok at the local african restaurant, while Thabiso ate a sheep’s head. Literally. When we were finished, we hung out at the hotel bar and watched the city warm up to New Years. There was a parade that ran through the city streets till all hours of the night, with many community bands playing very good brass and drum band music while ‘marching’ using a randomly synchronized walk down the street.
Victoria makes her way home to Vancouver tomorrow. Sarah and I have a car and an airbnb for another week.
