Day 13 – Going Back Home
I’ve spoken a lot about magical feelings, or more directly,
some intangible value or quality that various places on my trip so far have
brought, be it the Nile River, or the Pyramids. Well, Cape Town as a whole is
one of those as well. This city has been just magical to me dating back to
probably the 2nd or 3rd day of my first trip here back in
2013.
It is hard to say why – I mean beyond the things that make
Cape Town obviously special (the weather, the incredible views and scenery, the
great people, etc.). There are a few competing elements, but I think mostly it
is the idea of being so far away from home. Admittedly, South Africa is not
that far ‘South’ as people would think. Cape Town is about as far South as New
York is North.
I’ve been far further South when I went to Punta Arenas and
Tierra del Fuego in Chile (and of course, had the feeling there even more), but
still, being on some small appendage of a peninsula hanging off the bottom of
Africa is just cool.
Anyway, despite having gone twice already (and I can definitely
imagine multiple future trips as well), there are a few sites and restaurants
and bars I haven’t patronized yet. For my first full day, though, I kept it
fairly standard.
I got up late after a long night on Long Street, able to
sleep in for the first time in a while. After getting up, I had a couple hours before
my friend was joining, where I could play tour-guide to a point. I told him to
let me plan the days in Cape Town, understanding he’ll be doing a few things
for the first time that I’ll skip as I have already done them (e.g. Cape Point
trip, Stellenbosch wineries). I decided to spend that time doing one of my
favorite leisure activities in Cape Town: stroll through the waterfront, taking
a few seconds every now and then to stare mouth agape at the picturesque beauty
of Table Mountain, Lion’s Head, and the Cape Town city in the background.
I grabbed a quite bite at Vevo Telo, a breakfast spot in the
waterfront, and then took a stroll through the Waterfront, including stopping
by the growing V&A Food Market (many different stalls of really nice
looking food that I’m sure we’ll use as a quick lunch spot one of these days),
and the ‘Watershed’ craft market, prowling for some coasters.
Before I knew it, my friend had reached and we were off to
the Long Street area for lunch at Fork, a place I had been in 2013, but being
tapas style, had changed their menu quite considerably. They had built out a
nice terrace overlooking Long Street, and I quickly realized how less windy it
is in the city’s interior compared to the Waterfront. Lunch was nice, with the
Ostrich Goulash and Springbok sliders being the biggest hit.
My next stop was to the for Eastern side of the city, the
one on the other side of Table Mountain, to go on one of the many amazing
hiking trails that Cape Town has. There are tons of trails around that area
that are all fairly well marked, and nicely carved out (aside from a few areas
where you have to play hopscotch with a few rocks to get past waterfalls and
creeks). The one I did was called the ‘Contour Path’ that starts on one end at
Constantia Nek (which allowed for a great drive to Constantia, a posh Cape Town
suburb), and ends about 8km away, going up, around and through the back-end of
Table Mountain. All these trails are on the actual mountain that is Table
Mountain, and there are off-shoots to the Contour Path that would take you to
Table Mountain, but that wasn’t the destination today.
The trail was amazing, giving first panorama views of
Eastern Cape Town basking in resplendent sunlight, with nicely manicured
wineries, a few mountains, lush green, and the rest. That is on one side when
you hike. The other side is a view up Table Mountain – again the non-famous
side so it looks a bit different. As usual with afternoon, the cloud build-up
was starting, so it was quite a stunning, if a bit haunting view.
The full trail to the natural end takes about three hours,
so I cut it short by an hour and headed down after the trail passes
Kirstenbosch Park (you get nice aerial views of the Park as well, which is
another bonus), but this was after passing multiple waterfalls, and creeks, and
all sorts of types of trees, many that I think are fairly unique to Cape Town.
If this is the first shot in a few different trails to come, I can’t wait to
see a more scenic side of what may be the world’s most scenic city.
I met up then with my friend at the Waterfront to take him
to Mitchell’s for one nostalgic Milk & Honey beer. To be honest, the beer
is still good but not as good as I remembered it being from my 2016 trip. Cape
Town has also had an expansion of Craft Beer over the past few years that has
changed the stakes significantly as well.
Following, we took a quick break at the hotel before heading
out for dinner and drinks. Dinner was at The Pot Luck Club, the lesser priced,
tapas-style, sister restaurant of The Test Kitchen (which is Cape Town’s most reputed
restaurant). The meal was great, with us ordering and splitting six tapas out
of the 15 or so on the menu, and both ultimately wishing we could have tried out
the other nine as well.
Each item was good, be it the roasted turnips, or the qual
confit with peanut sauce, or the beef tataki, or the lam ras el hanout with
aubergine caviar (what?), or the korean-glazed tuna, or the beef fillet, or
even the desert of a perfectly cooked apple tart with cinnamon ice cream. It
was all good. All presented exquisitely. This is one of the restaurants that
have been born in Cape Town’s culinary boom over the past ten years; the same Chef’s
Table esque world that has been brought to life in so many cities. It is tucked
away in a strange warehouse-ey area of the city, but this was a true diamond in
the rough.
After that we took off for Long Street to end a slightly
less long day. It was surprisingly relatively quiet on Long Street, some of the
normal clubs (Fiction, The Waiting Room) were basically empty. The only spot
with a lot of people was Sgt. Pepper’s, which I hadn’t been to previously,
which was nice, mostly local crowd. We then took in a few live tunes at The
Dubliner before calling it a night.
