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It is a Cape of Storms and Hope here!
After a long night twisting, tossing, turning on an aircraft seat and fighting for the all important armrest bastion, the pilot's soothing voice telling us about Cape Town's weather - "...and the temperature is 13 degrees with a grey overcast...." - only gives you a very little bit of information about the days ahead. Not really enough information to make a ready judgement.
I pity those that come now to Cape Town expecting everlasting sun and warm days! But, even though I know better, I was still hoping for at least some days of glorious winter sunny weather! Our own Storms and Hope in the days ahead.
Cape Town was not named the "Cape of Storms" by mariners of old for nothing. It's fearsome reputation prompted Prince Henry the Navigator to rename it the "Cape of Good Hope". You see, Prince Henry needed his mariners to believe that it actually was the "Cape of Good Hope", otherwise how could he recruit crews for his Portugese ships? Sailors of old are a superstitious lot and in the 15th century they needed to believe that there was something to aim for on a long dangerous voyage!
So for the first few days we were here in Cape Town, we sat and watch the sky turn from grey to very grey to black before sheets of rain hit the windows and the riverlets obscured the views for hours at a time. We see the rain coming, if you ignored the pine trees bending in the north east wind! And my folks live in a fairly sheltered spot! What must it be like in the unsheltered spots? It is all very spectacular from the warm comfort of a well broken in family couch and a hot cup of tea! Pity the poor souls caught out there in the elements.
But there are two things that any Cape Townian can tell you about the weather here. One - the weather can be very unpredictable on an hourly basis and two - one side of the Table Mountain's weather is most likely not the other side's weather. You can be at the beach in the morning on one side and need a rain coat in the afternoon on the other side! It really can be "Cape of Storms" one side and "Cape of Good Hope" on the other!
While we have been here, we read an article in the local newspaper about a small group of Danish tourists who decided to go walking on Table Mountain in zero visibility with no rain gear, assuming that the 30 second patch of sun they saw from their backpacker window was a precursor of good things to come. The poor b******s had to be rescued wet, windy and a little castigated by the rescue services. Who would go out in weather like this? Just the misguided, ever-optimistic and ignorant tourists who come to Cape Town in all weathers. And the poor rescue services that have to go and get them!
Ah, those pesky storms and hope that succeeds them. I bet those Danes were hoping their storm would pass!
Showing Ingrid around the City and it surrounds, I was struck that in fact the two names describes the Cape particularly well. Everywhere you go there is the bipolar nature everywhere around you, if you care to look and see. Because you can not have any apppreciation of what Good Hope means unless you have the Storms that preceed it!
Once you leave this vastly improved airport and its shining new interior and its ever-friendly staff, practically the first sight to see is a literal sea of shacks and shanties behind big concrete fences. Is that to keep them and their cows in? Or for the tourists not to really notice this sea of people? And not even a kilometre away are some very affluent suburbs of Cape Town who houses are bound by rows of electric fencing, thick high walls and patrolling Neighbour Watch schemes.
It is not an uncommon sight to see hawkers and beggars at practically every set of traffic lights. Some so pathetic that they need a written sign to explain their terrible predicaments. A Cape Townian always has coins close to hand. Perhaps they give to allievate their conscience?
Parking a car on the streets is always under the watchful eye of a "car guard" wearing their high visibility coats. Do Cape Townians really need them? Or is it sheltered employment? But since we have been here, we have met "car guards" from the Democratic Republic of Congo and from Kenya and old farm workers too old to be useful for anything else. So to them, far away in strife torn "Stormy" Africa, this place is indeed the "Cape of Good Hope".
To us, it is both.
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