South African Odyssey - Week 3
Credit:
Week 3 Cape Town
Cape Town is the most visited place in all of Africa, more even than the pyramids of Egypt. It’s not surprising then to hear that there are 300,000 World Cup tourists in the city, though heaven knows how they came to that figure.
It’s a stunning place and easy to see why tourists flock here year round. It’s got the famous Table Mountain, Lions Head and Devils Peak mountains creating the natural bowl of the city. It has the Waterfront area, a reclaimed area of docklands that until reasonably recently was under the sea and more recently still was derelict and ramshackle until enterprising businessmen turned into the most upmarket and profit spinning few acres on the whole African continent.
It has Robben Island where Mandela was incarcerated from 1964-82 and of course now it has the magnificent Green Point Stadium.
We actually nipped into Cape Town earlier in the trip for one day to see Portugal beat the hapless Koreans 7-0 but now in our final week we were back to see a second round, quarter and semi.
Actually, Robben Island has a surprising Irish connection which we discover on our very rushed day trip to the former prison. In 1841 a Church was built on the Island in its only village – Irishtown. The church was built in part by the British but the town was established by Irish missionaries, priests, nuns, nurses and doctors and to this day weddings still take place there on Valentines Day. The church used to fly a blue flag every time a boy was born on the island and pink for a girl so the locals could have a celebration – well they were Irish after all.
But all of this was before it was a bastion of apartheid. It was a leper colony back then and before and afterwards it was a British prison. Children born to lepers on the island were found not to have inherited the disease and were removed to the mainland, only 7 miles across Table Bay, where they were adopted. 300 people still live here now.
Of course, the Island is famous as a political prison housing ANC activists like Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu who were convicted of treason. We see Mandela’s tiny cell still kitted out with basic mattress, stool and table, the infamous exercise yrd where so much indignity and torture broke the will of the prisoners and the lime quarry where the prisoners had to break stones to break their spirit.
We hit Cape Point too and the Cape of Good Hope first navigated by Bartholomew Diaz and then Vasco da Gama. It’s a place of unspeakable beauty but also very dangerous with more shipwrecks than anywhere else in the world. It is also infested with massive baboons that forage for food everywhere. They do not attack humans but if you stand between it and its food you may well get a bit of a hiding. They really are imposing, the bigger ones larger than your average Wheely-bin! Not to be messed with.
One moment stands out though for the wrong reason. On the way back from the Cape of Good Hope we stop off in Simons Town and Boulders, two seaside towns famous for their colonies of South Atlantic Penguins. They are beautiful birds and they waddle about the rocks happily. It is part of Table Mountain National Park and is a Nature Reserve so the birds are safe as houses. Until a Japanese lady rips a branch off a tree and prods the penguins along so she can shoot footage of them waddling and get better photos. Lets look at that one again... She breaks a branch off a tree in a nature reserve, a rare and pretty sapling at that. Then she pokes the wildlife to make them move. We are speechless with astonishment. The rangers aren’t though and she gets a well deserved pasting. It is unbelievable how inconsiderate some tourists can be.
Lots of tourists also hit the whale boat trips from Hermanus and of course climb Table Mountain where as I mentioned we met former Irish captain Andy Townsend here working with ITV.
But back to the football. Green Point is a very imposing structure with a sort of white net mesh to insulate the place for sound so the neighbours don’t have to suffer through bad concerts and noisy Vuvuzelas. But this insulation makes the noise in the stadium even more deafening as the sound waves have nowhere to go.
It is here that those signature Vuvuzelas are at their loudest. They penetrate to your very core, its hard even to speak, the whole place vibrates and shakes and the sound becomes the only thing that you are conscious of. It really has to be felt and heard to be believed. Watching the matches later in the hotel on TV you really don’t get a full picture of what those things are like. No wonder they’ve already been banned at the Aviva, at Irish clubs like Bray, Drogheda and Bohemians and at next years Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. But they are part of the experience here and even though they are annoying to many, I personally would have them in a heartbeat.
The FIFA rip off continues inside the stadium by the way. Inside all stadia, not just Cape Town, the caterers inside the ground charge 30 rand for a beer which incenses the locals. Now that’s only about €3.30 but given that the downtown price in pubs is only 12-18 rand then it’s easy to see why they are upset. They are also annoyed that it is Budweiser rather than the national staple, Castle lager.
The chocolate is double high street prices, the Biltong treble and the soft drinks double. Between accommodation, taxis and food/drink the loyal fans, who’ve travelled half way round the world to support FIFA and their product, will be going home with pretty light wallets.
We see a Spanish side brush Portugal aside with contempt as David Villa nets a second half winner. The Spanish don’t do much, but they don’t have to because Ronaldo and co are absolutely abysmal.
Then we see the Germans roast an Argentine side badly coached and without the two players in Esteban Cambiasso and Javier Zanetti who they most needed to steady the ship. The Argies in the crowd are furious with Maradona over this and are not shy in letting their feelings show.
Cue the trademark ticker tape, streamers and flags but this time with a forlorn anger towards the former king who could do no wrong. Germany on the other hand, with Angela Merkel just across from us are a picture of youthful abandon and though they too were later sent packing, it won’t be a surprise to see them winning it in 2014.
Finally its Uruguay and Holland. It’s amazing how disliked Uruguay are in South Africa. The locals hate them. Their crime is two fold. First of all they gave the Bafana Bafana a 3-0 drubbing. Secondly, they beat Ghana and the Luiz Suarez handball incident sits badly with the people here. But it’s a great atmosphere nonetheless and the crowd go home happy as a van Bronkhorst rocket and the Sneijder and Robben show send the last South American side home.
So there endeth the trip. ‘Once in a Lifetime’ indeed as the tournament byline says. Its slogan is so apt, ‘Ke Nako – Feel it, it’s here.’ We felt it all right, and will carry it all the days of our lives. Africa did itself proud this past month. They showed a warm smiling face to the world and treated its many visitors like kings. It’s just a shame so many were too scared to give them an even break. It’s their loss I’m afraid. Roll on Brazil but my God they have a hard act to follow. Over and out.
Cape Town is the most visited place in all of Africa, more even than the pyramids of Egypt. It’s not surprising then to hear that there are 300,000 World Cup tourists in the city, though heaven knows how they came to that figure.
It’s a stunning place and easy to see why tourists flock here year round. It’s got the famous Table Mountain, Lions Head and Devils Peak mountains creating the natural bowl of the city. It has the Waterfront area, a reclaimed area of docklands that until reasonably recently was under the sea and more recently still was derelict and ramshackle until enterprising businessmen turned into the most upmarket and profit spinning few acres on the whole African continent.
It has Robben Island where Mandela was incarcerated from 1964-82 and of course now it has the magnificent Green Point Stadium.
We actually nipped into Cape Town earlier in the trip for one day to see Portugal beat the hapless Koreans 7-0 but now in our final week we were back to see a second round, quarter and semi.
Actually, Robben Island has a surprising Irish connection which we discover on our very rushed day trip to the former prison. In 1841 a Church was built on the Island in its only village – Irishtown. The church was built in part by the British but the town was established by Irish missionaries, priests, nuns, nurses and doctors and to this day weddings still take place there on Valentines Day. The church used to fly a blue flag every time a boy was born on the island and pink for a girl so the locals could have a celebration – well they were Irish after all.
But all of this was before it was a bastion of apartheid. It was a leper colony back then and before and afterwards it was a British prison. Children born to lepers on the island were found not to have inherited the disease and were removed to the mainland, only 7 miles across Table Bay, where they were adopted. 300 people still live here now.
Of course, the Island is famous as a political prison housing ANC activists like Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu who were convicted of treason. We see Mandela’s tiny cell still kitted out with basic mattress, stool and table, the infamous exercise yrd where so much indignity and torture broke the will of the prisoners and the lime quarry where the prisoners had to break stones to break their spirit.
We hit Cape Point too and the Cape of Good Hope first navigated by Bartholomew Diaz and then Vasco da Gama. It’s a place of unspeakable beauty but also very dangerous with more shipwrecks than anywhere else in the world. It is also infested with massive baboons that forage for food everywhere. They do not attack humans but if you stand between it and its food you may well get a bit of a hiding. They really are imposing, the bigger ones larger than your average Wheely-bin! Not to be messed with.
One moment stands out though for the wrong reason. On the way back from the Cape of Good Hope we stop off in Simons Town and Boulders, two seaside towns famous for their colonies of South Atlantic Penguins. They are beautiful birds and they waddle about the rocks happily. It is part of Table Mountain National Park and is a Nature Reserve so the birds are safe as houses. Until a Japanese lady rips a branch off a tree and prods the penguins along so she can shoot footage of them waddling and get better photos. Lets look at that one again... She breaks a branch off a tree in a nature reserve, a rare and pretty sapling at that. Then she pokes the wildlife to make them move. We are speechless with astonishment. The rangers aren’t though and she gets a well deserved pasting. It is unbelievable how inconsiderate some tourists can be.
Lots of tourists also hit the whale boat trips from Hermanus and of course climb Table Mountain where as I mentioned we met former Irish captain Andy Townsend here working with ITV.
But back to the football. Green Point is a very imposing structure with a sort of white net mesh to insulate the place for sound so the neighbours don’t have to suffer through bad concerts and noisy Vuvuzelas. But this insulation makes the noise in the stadium even more deafening as the sound waves have nowhere to go.
It is here that those signature Vuvuzelas are at their loudest. They penetrate to your very core, its hard even to speak, the whole place vibrates and shakes and the sound becomes the only thing that you are conscious of. It really has to be felt and heard to be believed. Watching the matches later in the hotel on TV you really don’t get a full picture of what those things are like. No wonder they’ve already been banned at the Aviva, at Irish clubs like Bray, Drogheda and Bohemians and at next years Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. But they are part of the experience here and even though they are annoying to many, I personally would have them in a heartbeat.
The FIFA rip off continues inside the stadium by the way. Inside all stadia, not just Cape Town, the caterers inside the ground charge 30 rand for a beer which incenses the locals. Now that’s only about €3.30 but given that the downtown price in pubs is only 12-18 rand then it’s easy to see why they are upset. They are also annoyed that it is Budweiser rather than the national staple, Castle lager.
The chocolate is double high street prices, the Biltong treble and the soft drinks double. Between accommodation, taxis and food/drink the loyal fans, who’ve travelled half way round the world to support FIFA and their product, will be going home with pretty light wallets.
We see a Spanish side brush Portugal aside with contempt as David Villa nets a second half winner. The Spanish don’t do much, but they don’t have to because Ronaldo and co are absolutely abysmal.
Then we see the Germans roast an Argentine side badly coached and without the two players in Esteban Cambiasso and Javier Zanetti who they most needed to steady the ship. The Argies in the crowd are furious with Maradona over this and are not shy in letting their feelings show.
Cue the trademark ticker tape, streamers and flags but this time with a forlorn anger towards the former king who could do no wrong. Germany on the other hand, with Angela Merkel just across from us are a picture of youthful abandon and though they too were later sent packing, it won’t be a surprise to see them winning it in 2014.
Finally its Uruguay and Holland. It’s amazing how disliked Uruguay are in South Africa. The locals hate them. Their crime is two fold. First of all they gave the Bafana Bafana a 3-0 drubbing. Secondly, they beat Ghana and the Luiz Suarez handball incident sits badly with the people here. But it’s a great atmosphere nonetheless and the crowd go home happy as a van Bronkhorst rocket and the Sneijder and Robben show send the last South American side home.
So there endeth the trip. ‘Once in a Lifetime’ indeed as the tournament byline says. Its slogan is so apt, ‘Ke Nako – Feel it, it’s here.’ We felt it all right, and will carry it all the days of our lives. Africa did itself proud this past month. They showed a warm smiling face to the world and treated its many visitors like kings. It’s just a shame so many were too scared to give them an even break. It’s their loss I’m afraid. Roll on Brazil but my God they have a hard act to follow. Over and out.
