After I left Zimbabwe, I headed into Botswana. My plan was to visit the Makgadikgadi Pans and then the Okavango Delta before heading into Namibia. This didn't quite work out. When I got to Botswana I was just really tired of travelling. I kept thinking about going home and the thought of yet another bus ride just sounded terrible. I really did want to go home, but had this feeling that if I went home at this point I would regret it. After about two days of thinking about what to do I finally decided to skip the pans, just go to the Delta and then see how I felt. I made a reservation at a camp, checked out of my guest house, and walked to the bus station.

And could not make myself get on the bus to Maun, near the Delta.

I went into the lounge, sat down for a few minutes, and decided to fly home which meant getting either to Botswana's capital, Gaborone or Johannesburg, South Africa. Made in reservation for Gaborone for that night. Cancelled my reservation in Maun. Got on the bus to Gaborone. It was crazy and it was sad. I knew that I had made the right decision to not go to Maun, but the thought that my trip was just so suddenly over did not seem right. About an hour or two into the bus ride I came up with a third option: instead of going to the Delta or flying home, I could find a nice cosy hostel in Cape Town and stay there until I felt like travelling again or until I was sure that I wanted to go home.

This meant a few days of hard travelling. The ride to Gaborone was about six hours long and was followed the next day by another 6 or so hour long ride to Pretoria. I then gave myself a day off of travelling to sit around and do pretty much nothing before the really long twenty hour, extremely over-air-conditioned overnight bus ride from Pretoria to Cape Town.

As it turned out, going to Cape Town was an excellent decision. Cape Town is a wonderful, beautiful city situated around Table Mountain. It has a harbor, beautiful beaches, good restaurants, and lots of good hiking areas. Penguin viewing and whale watching could be done on day trips. In short, Cape Town was the perfect place to relax and recharge. I ended up staying for three weeks. Mostly I just relaxed, but I did get out a little. Here are a few highlights:

Happy Birthday to Me
I arrived in Cape Town around 9am on my birthday and I was tired. I hadn't been able to sleep on the bus because the air conditioner was up so high that I spent all night shivering. Not the greatest way to start out one's birthday. On the upside though, I had met someone on the bus that was up for going out for my birthday with me. So, after I had had a chance to take a nap and relax a little we went out to Canal Walk, which is the biggest, poshest, shopping mall that I have ever been to and the biggest in Africa. We dined on steak, went to the arcade, and went out to the movies. I bought myself a brand-new book to read. It was a completely un-African evening and was just what I needed.

Robben Island
One of the biggest "tourist attractions" in Cape Town is Robben Island. It is a short ferry ride away from Cape Town and is the island on which Nelson Mandela was held during much of his imprisonment. The island itself was windy and cold and, truth be told, there was not much to see there (though, strangely enough, there were penguins). We were shown the sights on the island which were really just more or less ordinary looking buildings. Then we were taken to see the maximum-security prison where Nelson Mandela and the other political prisoners were held. Again, there really wasn't much to see there. What the highlight of the trip was, was that our tour guide at the prison was a former political prisoner. Hearing his insight about the mistreatment the prisoners suffered and realizing that he has not been embittered by what happened to him there was fascinating.

Prisoners generally didn't have sufficient clothing or food. (Black prisoners anyway. White, Indian, and Colored prisoners actually got more provisions.) Visits from family were limited to thirty minutes once every six months and only domestic issues could be discussed. The prisoners worked most days in a quarry, often just moving a pile of rocks from point A to point B to point C and then back to point A again.

The most thought provoking fact to me, though, was why our guide had been in prison. He said he had been convicted of sabotage for burning down a government building, but that he should have been convicted of arson. This was more than a bit surprising to hear. I think most people generally have a glorified view of political prisoners. My "image" of political prisoners had previously been been that of someone leading protests or writing subversive literature. But in fact, many political prisoners (Mandela included) actually commited violent acts that would be severly punished in almost any society. Under almost any circumstances what our guide did would have been wrong. Which begs the question: was it wrong for him to have burnt down the government building? And to that question, I do not have an answer. What no one asked our guide, was: Were there any people in the building? Was it part of a larger organized plan? Or was it something he did on his own, caught up in the times? It may be that he was just convicted of sabotage rather than arson because sabotage carried a heavier penalty and the government wanted to put him away for a long time.

Table Mountain
The city of Cape Town in built around beautiful Table Mountain. Yes, the mountain is right in the middle of the city, which is beautiful (I had a view from right outside the fron door of my hostel) although a bit inconvenient if you are trying to get from one side of the city to the other. In any case, Table Mountain is there and so it must be climbed. I went one Saturday morning with Angela, a women staying at the same hostel as I. There are about a dozen different hiking paths up the mountain and we went up a trail called Skeleton Gorge. The path started in the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens and soon soon entered into the forest. I have been only many hikes in my day and this was definitely one of the most straight-up paths I have ever been on. Very rarely did the path even get level for a few paces. There were lots and lots of stairs, occasionally broken up by ladders or having to scramble up the rocks in the river-bed (though somewhat more at waterfall angle than river angle).

When we reached the top of the mountain we were treated to beautiful views of the western (I think) side of the city and the realization that although the top of Table Mountain looks flat from below in the city, in reality, it is not. We were still going up, although at a bit less of a steep angle. The top of the mountain was covered with heath and wildflowers, mostly fynbos, which are a type of plant endemic to the Cape region. Very beautiful. When Angela and I reached one of the lookout points we stopped for lunch. As we were eating the clouds started rolling in. As we walked over to the other side of the mountain all was foggy. We could only see a little ways in front of us and the views disappeared. At one viewpoint we stopped and looked down into endless nothingness. At that point we were at the upper cable car station and agreed that we had hiked up the mountain and that there was really no need to hike down when we could just take the cable car.

Penguins!
One of the highlights of Cape Town for me was definitely seeing the penguins on Boulder's Beach in Simon's Town. I was with some other people staying at my hostel and, to get to the beach, we walked down along a boardwalk with white sand, brush, boulders, and penguins on either side of us. The penguins paid no attention to us and we were able to get very close to them. As we got closer to the ocean the number of penguins increased. Some were standing really close to the boardwalk roviding me with an overhead view. Others were right down by the beautiful, aqua-blue, clear waters. To the left of the boardwalk, a group of penguins stood amid boulders and white sand. Most of them were resting, but some were waddling (three in a line) and some were preening their feathers. On the right of the boardwalk a smaller group was on the sand. There were a number of gray, feathery juveniles and some penguins in nests (holes in the sand) with babies just barely visible. I probably could have stayed and watched the penguins all day, but, alas, my excursion-mates wanted to move on so I had to leave.