Wednesday: Impressions

The clouds on the top of table mountain roll and pitch all day. They

cascade like a waterfall. I can hardly wait to get up there.

I am my father's son. I love harbours, but this one is more like the 

Chicago pier than a working port. The working port was too far to walk to.

1. Old business: I was taken aback by having to pay a fee to go into St. Paul's in London. I always use churches as sanctuaries when I travel and I absolutely love their architecture. They are oases of calm, but I have never ever had to pay, as I recall, even at the Vatican. That's been sticking in my craw since London and not even this paradise has obliterated it, but now that I have recorded it here perhaps I will heal!
2. I  have lived for a year in Nice and I have lost  my soul to the charm of the white-washed architecture and the charm of the Greek islands. And I have visited that socio-geo-political islands of Gibraltar and Bermuda. Well Cape Town is the white heat and Buganvilia of the Greek Islands plus the Britishness of Bermuda—especially with the heavy presence of African people—plus, in some areas along the coast, the tourist vibe of a small sea-side town on the cote d'azure such as Juan-les-Pins.
3. Before booking my trip, whenever I mentioned that I was going to South Africa, people would say how beautiful it was. Then, after I booked, virtually everyone's response was: "Be really careful because the crime there is intense." Those sentiments fed my abundant overall anxiety about the trip—a new experience for me—and when I saw all the locks on the stores and the security guards everywhere including Sandy Bay beach, I remained concerned. But today I walked for four-and-a-half hours into the Vitoria and Albert  wharf area and back along the sea. It was hot but there was a nice breeze and not a molecule of me was concerned about my security. I expect to be prudent in our travels, but here is no different then many other places I have been—it is just one of the more beautiful.
4. Last year, my trip to Tanzania was my first time across the equator. Now I am at the bottom of the world and that awareness heightens your experience of the rolling thunder of the waves as they crash and run up the linear structure of the rocks that you know have withstood the incredible power of the sea since the beginning of time. This tip of the world is raw Africa, but then it isn't—it's Britishish and unlike anywhere else on this continent that I have ever been. After visiting Bermuda, Trinidad, Hong Kong, Gibraltar, India, here and living in British Columbia, the Commonwealth becomes something far more real than an idea.