Hostels & Guesthouses

Table Mountain & District 6

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The geographical configuration of the city of Cape Town at the foot of Table Mountain is as beautiful as everyone has said it is. We took the cable car to the top of the mountain on a clear beautiful day. We rented a car and took a ride down to the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Town isn’t actually on the tip of the Cape) about 20 miles down the peninsula where Bob hiked up to the lighthouse to get a good view of the Atlantic on one side and the Indian Ocean on the other.

Music
The epic documentary by American Lee Hirsch, “Amandla! A Revolution in four Part Harmony,” had its first South African outing on June 16 at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. The film that earned two awards from the Sundance Film Festival describes the arc of the ANC’s resistance to apartheid from 1948 to the moment when Nelson Mandela dropped the first black vote into the ballot box in 1994 via the music that gave shape and direction to the war on apartheid. It has been entered for the US Academy awards. It will be showing in the States.

District Six
We visited the museum where a former Indian occupant expained that 60 to 70 thousand people-freed slaves, immigrants, labourers, merchants and artisans-used to live in the one and a half square km district spread along the flank of Table Mountain south of the center of Cape Town. In 1975 District Six was officially declared an area for white people only and bulldozed flat. All that remains now is a grassy area…but “they” had gotten rid of the Blacks, Colored and other undesirables that lived on the edge of the city…

The museum was established in 1992 to commemorate the destruction of the area and the sense of loss has been sensitively captured by the many artifacts donated by the ex-residents.

The Cannon is on Signal Hill right behind our apartment and is fired off every day at noon and makes your heart jump out of your skin. Started in the 1800’s we are told, when the English withdrew after the English/Boer War. They fire off the cannon 21 times at important times or when important dignitaries visit the city.

Bo Kaap or Cape Malay Quarter

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The next day we take a minibus for 3 rand each (10 rand to a dollar) to look for an apartment. The buses are many and frequent with no schedule-you just wave one down when you need it-very efficient!

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As we walk into the neighborhood where we have found a beautiful modern apartment, de Waterkant Village, in a quiet residential area near downtown, I see a young guy in red plastic tennis shoes with a funky white patent plastic shoulder bag with Catch 22 written on it it cross the street and I know which Cape Town neighborhood we are in…do you? The neighorhood, used to be Malay, a (colored) neighborhood until all the Malays were run out by the apartheid system. Now it has become a gentrified little village with little cafes although some Malays are moving back in. This is the gay neighborhood.

The “Bo Kaap” or “Cape Malay Quarter” belongs to the culturally and historically most interesting parts of Cape Town. Many of the inhabitants are decendants of the people from Indonesia (Batavia), Sri Lanka, India and Malaysia, who were captured in the 17th and 18th century and enslaved by the Dutch-East Indian Trading Company. Many were Mulims and others were converted to Islam by the Cape Muslim community.

The Cape Malays and their religious leaders played an important role in the development of the language and culture of the Cape colony. The Afrikaans language evolved as a language of its own through a simplification of Dutch in order for the slaves to be able to communicate with the Dutch and amongst each others, since they all came from different countries and cultures. Educated Muslims were the first to write texts in Afrikaans.

The Cape Malays have preserved their cultural identity and Muslemic creed. The old Malay Quarter with its steep and narrow streets, the plain artisan houses, Mosques and Minaretts reaches from the Buitengracht street up to the Signal Hill. The houses were restored and colourfully painted. The architectural style is a synthesis of Cape Dutch and Edwardian.

One of the oldest buildings in Wale Street 71 houses the “Bo-Kaap Museum”. It is furnished as a Muslim house of the 19th century and documents the history of the Cape Malays.

Coon Carnival
Around the corner from our apartment was a little muslim owned market we would go to every morning for a pastry and the newspaper. One morning I asked the shopkeeper who all the people were who would come at night to sing those wonderful rhythmic songs in the big empty garage across the street. He tried to explain to me about the “coons.” When I looked at him with a quizzical look he said, oh, yes, in the United States coon is a bad word isn’t it?

But later, when we visited the District 6 museum we learned about the Coon Carnival that takes place every year at New Years. They practice all year long, three times a week, for the new years carnival where groups from all over compete in singing contests. They parade through the center of Cape Town wearing their coon uniforms and black and white cream on their faces. No one ever did explain why the participants are called “coons.”

It was originally introduced by the Muslim slaves who celebrated their only day off work in the whole year. Nowadays men, woman and children march from the Grand Parade to the Green Point stadium, singing and dancing. They are clad in colorful, shiny suits, white hats and carry a sun umbrella.

The next leg of our journey is supposed to be India but since the state department has asked all Americans to leave India because of the Kashmir/Pakistani conflict I don’t know what we are going to do. We have four weeks here to decide but we will probably go. Right now I don’t want to think of going ANYWHERE!

Cape Town!

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June 15, 16, 2002
James make an unbelievable maneuver with the truck into the Lion’s Head Lodge & Backpacker Compound around a corner and in between parked cars on both sides of the street. We are amazed! He has done this before. He parks beside several other trucks. And we can’t believe the trip is over! I will miss the crew.

Cape Town, about 40km from the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of the continent, is a beautiful city up against the 1000 meter high giant Table Mountain. Lonely Planet calls the city a “volatile mixture of the Third and First Worlds.” The cafes on Long St. and the bars at the Waterfront could be in any cosmopolitan capital but the townships on the bleak, windswept plains to the east of the city could only be in Africa.”

We all eat a last meal together at a wonderful seafood restaurant in the upscale Victoria and Albert Waterfront Mall that evening. Bob and I come back to the compound and fall into bed; the others find a hip hop club and dance and party until 4:00 in the morning. Boy do we feel past that stage!

Citrusdal and The Baths

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June 14, 2002 My birthday
The Baths is a health spa about 16 km from Citrusdal in a pretty wooded gorge. It is a long weekend in South Africa; Monday is Youth Day-(SA has 13 public holidays) so Rod’s wife Brenda drives up from Cape Town. Bob and I, Sarah and Adrian and Heather and Fi upgrade to a chalet-$6 each and it’s wonderful to sleep in a bed.

Around the camp fire that night James and George teach me how to say “cool banana” in Swahili: Poe Matoke!

There is a cold swimming pool and another swimming pool fed by the hot springs so we sit in the soothing warm water a while before going to bed.

The next morning at breakfast Bob shows me a note he has written: “Happy Birthday,” which takes me by surprise as I had forgotten what day it was.

Then the truck takes us into Citrusdal where we experience a wine tasting of South African wines, including one made of Rooibos Tea which tastes like medicine. There is a nice break in the weather and we have lunch out on the front porch; the food is wonderful and half of us order a second entre which startles the woman restaurant owner!

That evening back at camp Bob appears with a cake and one candle and Nikki gives me Apricot jam and a piece of handmade soap made of goat’s milk and Ylang Ylang that we can use in our apartment in Cape Town. Think she must have seen me eyeing these things in the little wine shop…I am very touched by everyone’s good wishes!

Then everyone walks up to the Baths again. Just as Bob and I were getting into our tent, though, Rod drives up and tells us there has just been a cancellation in one of the suites in the hotel…so off we go to yet another night in a real bed on my birthday! Turned out to be a really good thing though because Bob was up about 10 times that night with diarrhea.

Ombinda Country Lodge

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Sunday June 2, 2002 near Outjo
Yesterday the truck broke a spring so we stopped in the Afrikaner town of Outjo to find a mechanic and pick up some groceries. James drove us to a beautiful camp just outside the town of Outjo-Ombinda Country Lodge so we would have a place to wait while he took the truck to a mechanic-this is Sunday. We end up spending the night-each of us in these charming little huts made with tree branches one and half inches in diameter-we can see daylight in-between them…feels like Africa only with the best hot shower yet, sink and toilet and beds with electric sheets!

The camp owner, an Afrikaner, has owned the camp for six years. In the bar we watch CNN news and the others drink beer and wine, play pool, swim in the pool and lie in the sun all afternoon. We order dinner at the outdoor lodge restaurant that by 7pm has been closed in from the cold with a roaring wood fire going. Bob has a filet of beef and I have a steak from the beautiful Oryx-the national animal of Namibia! Sleeping that night in a real bed was heaven.

Pleasuring In Zanzibar

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We spent evenings on the deck of the Mercury Bar watching the sun set over the Indian Ocean full of fishing boats and beautiful lean bodies swimming in the water. The Mercury Bar is named after Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen before he died, was born just up the street. We read in a local English language newspaper that his Bohemian Rhapsody was recently voted the number one all-time most popular song in the UK. Incidentelly, the bar menu has a drink called the Monica Lewinsky-Blue Curacao, triple sec, gin and sprite. Subscript: “Find out what a bubbly body can do in a blue dressing!”

Next morning on the 14th it’s back on the ferry (hi-speed hydrofoil this time) to the truck waiting for us in Dar es Salaam where we camped at the Mikadi Beach Resort in Dar again. We fight off the Malaria “mosies” (mosquitos) in the tent with a towel before falling asleep in a heap.

Cairo Egypt

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On April 21, 2002 while waiting for our flight from Athens to Cairo, we visited briefly with a gentleman sitting next to us who was on his way to Alexandria for what we thought was the dedication of the new Biblioteca Alexandrina (Alexandria Library). He was on the Board of Trustees I heard him tell an associate. When we boarded the plane a picture of the spectacular new library was on the cover of Horus, the Egypt Air magazine. The original library built by the Greeks in the fourth Century burned down in a fire so now President Mubarak and UNESCO has rebuilt the library. The design is a simple disc inclined toward the sea, partly submerged in a pool of water and is covered with Aswan granite engraved with calligraphic letters and representative inscriptions from the world civilizations. Really felt I’d missed something by not seeing it.

What we didn’t know at the time, however, was that there had been a huge student demonstration against Israel a few days before and a student had been killed by armed police whereupon Egypt cancelled indefinitely the dedication ceremonies in deference to the Palestinians.

Off the plane, a young Brit who had been in the country about 7 months as a volunteer teacher with the British version of our Peace Corps, jumped into the taxi with us for the ride into Cairo. He spent some time negotiating the fare with the driver. “20 pounds…you said!!” We found out later that they often tell you one price and then when it comes time to pay they up the price-or they will tell you one pound and then when you pull out the money they say “no, no English pounds!” So our taxi driver is getting double fare? “Yes,” he said, “that seems to often be the case here.”

We stayed on the island of Gezira in the middle of the Nile in Cairo. We stayed at the Mayfair Hotel in Zamelak, an area on the north end of the island where there are many embassies. The main street is named Sharia 26 of July to commemorate the fiery coup in 1952 that destroyed all the landmarks of 70 years of British rule.

There are several bridges that cross the Nile to Gezira, the one nearest us being the October 6 bridge, commemorating the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur when Egypt launched a surprise attack across the Suez Canal and restored Egypt’s national pride after the Israeli defeat of the Egyptian forces during the six day war in 1967 when Israel took control of the Sinai peninsula.

The capital of the Old Kingdom of Egypt has some extraordinary funerary monuments, including rock tombs, ornate mastabas, temples and pyramids. In ancient times, the site was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It is now an UNESCO World Heritage Site

Santorini & Sifnos

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As the ferry approached the island through the caldera you see a red-brown black and pumice grey terraced cliff face that looms hundreds of feet above the water with brilliant-white buildings with blue trim reflecting the Aegean Sea hanging off the side. But all those beautiful buildings hanging off the cliffs of Santorini, as it turns out, are all hotels, boutique shops, cafes and restaurants with a few blue domed Byzantine churches mixed in.

Walked into a cafe for breakfast of coffee and pastry the first morning to the sounds of Portland’s own Pink Martini playing on the stereo. While walking around the town-Bob in his perennial shorts-we passed a group of Spanish teenagers and one was heard in English “look at that guy-he’s wearing shorts-makes no sense! Do you think it made any impression on Bob?

After exploring the island’s archaelogical and historical sites and lying on black sand beaches there was not much else to do unless you were twenty years old and wanted to spend all night in the discos-so we ferried it six hours to another, smaller island-Sifnos.

Sifnos
At the harbor port of Kamares we took a bus the five miles up a windy road to Apollonia where we checked late into the Sifnos Hotel-tired and hungry. There was only one other patron in the hotel, a French publisher who returns to the island every spring. Apostolos, the hotel proprietor, welcomed us each with an Ouzo. Then he treated the French woman and Bob and I with Mezedhes (appetizers) and we sat for the next two hours eating and talking culture and politics. This is what I had been waiting for! Marie, the French publisher was reading the memoirs of Edward W. Said the professor at Columbia University whose books are popular reading these days for an understanding of the middle east.

Apollonia is an amalgam of three very charming hilltop villages with connecting white-washed buildings with flower-draped balconies lining immaculate narrow marble footways. The people actually live and work here and one gets the feeling this is how they prefer things. The shops are only open during the summer so most of the locals have other work the remainder of the year, Apostolos says.

Sifnos is 16km by 8km-great for walking-so Bob took off the next day for a five hour walk following a trail with one great view after another along the way up to an acropolis with a church and some ruins from 600BC. Almost the entire island was terraced 2-3000 years ago when the islanders supported themselves with agricultural products but since the advent of tourism and vehicle ferries the walled terraces now mostly grow yellow and white daisies and blood-red poppies and support the lonely burro and the goats. It is interesting that the people built their town in and around the many ruins; Greece taking for granted its antiquity.

This island has given us a welcome respite from noise and activity; none of the shops were open yet and their owners were painting, sweeping, repairing all over-preparing for the summer-eager and hopeful.

Apostolos says the Greek Orthodox church is very powerful in Greece-and very conservative-legislating every aspect of family life which is the all-important institution next to the church. Families stay together always-even if/when children move away there is almost daily contact, he says. Marie, the French lady said that yes, the Greeks seem open and friendly but there it stops-they are very clannish and no one on the outside gets into the inner circles. She and Apostolos recommend reading “Three Summers” by Margareta Liberaki published also in English.

Women
My sense about the young women I have seen especially in the less developed countries of Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Greece is that they are a pretty savvy lot. Nothing will hold them back now!

As there was a strike on the day we planned to take the ferry back to Athens, we asked Apostolos if we could have the hotel room for the afternoon. “Of course, of course,” he says, “life is simple, life is simple!” When we were ready to leave, he gave us each a going away drink of Ouzo. I don’t want to leave this place…I am grateful for this journey; I have learned these ways so far to say thank you: Greek-efsharisto, Spanish-Gracias, French-merci, Portuguese-obrigado/a, Italian-grazie.

Back in Athens, I sat in the internet cafe with a young Anglican priest from Britain who was bicycling his way to Haifa Israel. Not worried, he said. The other fellow, was a UN Police Observer from South Bend, Indiana stationed in Kosovo making 90,000 a year. He was in Athens on leave. Meeting people like this is one of the reasons I like going to Internet cafes.

Rome

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“Italy will return to the splendors of Rome, said the major. I don’t like Rome, I said. It is hot and full of fleas. You don’t like Rome? Yes, I love Rome. Rome is the mother of nations. I will never forget Romulus suckling the Tiber. What? Nothing. Let’s all go to Rome. Let’s go to Rome tonight and never come back. Rome is a beautiful city, said the major.” Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms.

Took one of those plush high speed TGV trains from Florence to Rome-one and a half hours. Wish the U.S. could have a similar system. A nice young guy in Bayonne, France who, while selling me some wonderful French perfume, told me about his three months he spent in the states and Canada-by traveling and sleeping on buses!

In Rome we checked in Pensione Cortorillo near the Termini (train station). This time there is a lift to the fifth floor. However, it was about 3 feet by 3 feet square. Bob thought he was going to be smart so he turned around and backed in with his backpack on. I walked in face first flat up against him. The inner doors (like French doors) barely closed behind me. Ok, good to go. Press the button nothing happens. Then Bob realizes that there is an outer door. So I have to back up through the door, turn around and back in so I can close the outer door. We get to the fifth floor. The lift stops. I look down through the metal grate of the lift and see the next floor about 12 feet down. Bob can’t see anything but now we can hear voices so I am thinking that since I can hear them maybe they will hear us holler for help. After some few seconds (which is long enough for many different thoughts to race through your head) Bob manages to turn his head far enough to see that behind him is another metal grate door and through it he sees the hotel proprietor waving frantically and yelling for Bob to open the door behind him which he does with great difficulty. Saved from eternal imprisonment in Rome.

The Vatican City, one of the most sacred places in Christendom, attests to a great history and a formidable spiritual venture. A unique collection of artistic and architectural masterpieces lie within the boundaries of this small state. At its centre is St Peter’s Basilica, with its double colonnade and a circular piazza in front and bordered by palaces and gardens. The basilica, erected over the tomb of St Peter the Apostle, is the largest religious building in the world, the fruit of the combined genius of Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, Bernini and Maderna.
We took a two-hour bus tour to get an overview of this city full of marble domes, Roman ruins with pieces lying willy nilly about, noseless and penusless statues and motorcycle dust. The tour was narrated in English but we only understood about half of it because of the Italian accent.

I had wanted very much to see the Trevi Fountain across from which was a delightful guesthouse where Barbara and I, in 1965, could look out on the fountain from our second floor window. We weren’t looking, unfortunately, when every last single bit of our luggage, and film, was stolen out of the trunk of my little red Spitfire Triumph that night. Legend has it that a traveler who throws a coin into the Fontana di Trevi, with its rumble of cascading water emerging from the back wall of the Palazzo, is ensured a speedy return to Rome and one who tosses two will fall in love in Rome. Well, in 1965 the first coin didn’t ensure such a speedy return but the second coin worked-my travel partner was charmed by a young Italian and spent a week longer in Rome while I went on toward Berlin by myself.

Rome is sensory overload of 2000 years of world history, art, architecture, politics and literature. We were exhausted after trying to absorb Florence and now Rome so we retreated gratefully to our room for a nap-falling asleep to the sound of music from “The Doors” and laughter from the young backpackers that filled the pension.

Barri Gotic Barcelona

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In Barcelona we stayed in the Lower Barri Gotic area at Hotel Peninsular at Carrer Sant Pau, 34. Two single beds; sink; window opens into central court; very clean and nice bathroom and shower down the hall; towels, soap, toilet paper even. The hotel was on a narrow side street off the Rhumba or main promenade; full of Middle Eastern and Indian businesses. Down the street away from the Rhumba and couple blocks toward the water was a pretty rough area with prostitutes standing facing the street always with one foot up flat against the wall. Excellent cafe around the corner toward Rhumba; internet about three blocks down the Rhumba toward a statue of Columbus pointing the way West.

Bob came back late to the hotel one night about midnight. Right in front of the
hotel doors three guys walked up by him. One of them asked for the time and as Bob tried to show him his watch the guy tried to trip him. The hotel proprietor, who was on the job and alert, came running out of the hotel with a club. The men run off leaving Bob rather shaken and leery.

Big Deal
The architect Gaudi has left some remarkably wonderful work including the cathedral called the Temple Expiatiori de la Sagrada Familia. It won’t be completed before 2020. I want to come back to see it even if someone has to wheel me in here! The Gaudi Park, originally built as a planned living community, failed and was taken over by the city.

Seven properties built by the architect Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926) in or near Barcelona testify to Gaudí’s exceptional creative contribution to the development of architecture and building technology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Parque Güell, Palacio Büell, Casa Mila, Casa Vicens, Gaudí’s work on the Nativity façade and Crypt of the Sagrada Familia cathedral, Casa Batlló, and the Crypt in Colonia Güell represent an eclectic, as well as a very personal, style which was given free reign in the design of gardens, sculpture and all decorative arts, as well as architecture.

The work of Antoni Gaudí represents an exceptional and outstanding creative contribution to the development of architecture and building technology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Gaudí’s work exhibits an important interchange of values closely associated with the cultural and artistic currents of his time, as represented in el Modernisme of Catalonia. It anticipated and influenced many of the forms and techniques that were relevant to the development of modern construction in the 20th century.

Gaudí’s work represents a series of outstanding examples of the building typology in the architecture of the early 20th century, residential as well as public, to the development of which he made a significant and creative contribution. The area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Small things
How to feel stupid in another country: buy a Metro Pass and then stand there like a dummy because you cannot figure out how to get it into the intake slot where you walk through the stiles. Finally we both figured it out at once-take the paper pass out of it’s tight clear plastic cover! If you hate feeling out of control and disoriented be sure to travel-it’ll make you flexible and tolerant!

News
The International Herald Tribune co-produces a pull-out section with whatever country it is distributed in, so for example, in Spain, the paper co-produces the pull out with El Pais, the major Spanish daily. The chairmanship of the European Union changes every six months and Spain is taking its turn so the papers are covering the EU and Basque terrorism.