I'm amazed at how, without any real planning, I've been finding myself on the sites of my childhood geographical fantasies, rooted in the stories and songs popular at the time when I was 10-12 years old. Patagonia of Paganel (the character of the adventure book
"Les enfants du capitaine Grant" by Jules Verne) several months ago, and now
Cape of Good Hope with its
Flying Dutchman! The feeling behind my reaction to Its Russian name,
Мыс Доброй Надежды, is very difficult to explain. It immediately takes me way back down the childhood memory lane, but not really providing any images or actual memories, but rather just the general, achingly beautiful in its simultaneous sadness and joy,
sense of childhood. It seems so interesting to me how a word, a smell, an image can have such an intense instant effect on our whole emotional being.
I never really had any particular dream to go to South Africa, but I'm so glad my travel road took me here.
Cape Town, one of the THREE (!!!) official capitals of
South Africa (the legislative one, there are also the administrative capital – Pretoria, and the judicial - Bloemfontein), is very pretty. Although it reminds me a bit of Rio (surrounded by water and mountains) and Dubai (ultra-modern flashy buildings), the two cities I feel least comfortable in around the world so far, Cape Town has the energy that is at the same time attractive, intriguing and soothing to me. I don't have any particular desire to ever spend months or years here, but I would definitely like to come back one day. It may be the weather – we are in the southern hemisphere spring season right now and everything is blooming, bursting with bright, gorgeous colors. It may be the food – although I'm not a big fan of cooked fish, I love sushi, and I daresay that the "rainbow roll reloaded" (with some chef's "secret" sauce) at
Willoughby & Co. can compete with my absolute favorite
Yama in NYC.
This time I'm traveling with a group of "travel professionals". I have a sneaking suspicion that none of them has anything to do with this business though, at least I'm kind of a "professional traveler" now by vocation and I do write reviews and personal impressions for the potential future follower of the same path. Normally, during such tours you share a room with somebody, but our group is 7 people in total, all couples but me, so I'm lucky (surpriseJ) to have the beautiful 5-star hotel accommodations all to myself.
Normally, I'm against group travel (unless it's a group of friends, of course), but I decided to go for it for the experience (and of course the cost / value ratio of this trip: the same accommodations and excursions program for the individual tour would be 6 times more expensive!). As with everything in life, there are advantages and disadvantages to this type of travel. On one hand, it's very easy: everything is planned to the tiniest detail, you don't have to think of anything, just show up on time, look pretty (well, that's optionalJ), and enjoy your day full of attractions. Another advantage of this particular trip is that we are staying exclusively in 5-star hotels. The first one - Taj Cape Town - is really nice and super comfortable. For my personal review of this hotel (written in the spirit of my new "profession") click here.
On the other hand, the program is too full to my taste: of course, it's great to see and learn a lot, but you don't have any time to enjoy the moment (something that has become part of me over the past several months of my free flight), the "free time" given to you on each site is pretty limited and definitely not enough for me to appreciate the surrounding scenery (and it is SO gorgeous!). The only 15 minutes I could "steal" for taking in the beautiful Atlantic at the Cape of Good Hope was while everybody else ran around the site maniacally taking pictures.
All in all, I am happy that I have chosen this particular tour program for my South African adventure. In certain countries you just require the presence of a local or a guide (and in my case the both roles are represented by the same person – a Lithuanian girl Svetlana who has lived in Cape Town for the past 6 years), and even after only one day I already realize that I wouldn't have been able to see South Africa well enough had it not been for this arrangement. In other words, as the South Africans say in response to "Thank you", "It's a plezhah".
P.S. So far no bag… Oh well, it is what it is.
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