Cape Town

I really have no idea what to say about Cape Town.

It was a city. A large city. Much larger than Port Elizabeth. The houses were colorful. A large mountain loomed over us all. There were white people and black people talking to each other.

Most of the time I spent there was stressful. It was stressful trying to fit into a new group, it was stressful trying to fit in all the touristy things without actually becoming a tourist. It was stressful thinking about how much I was missing of my community service project. It was stressful trying to meet gay people, and be outgoing and myself at the same time.

I think I like smaller cities. I like where you don’t have any options but to sit, write, and talk to other people. I like the arts, and I want to be in a city that supports the arts, but I no longer think it’s a necessity. Cities distract you, with their endless assortment of pleasure-gathering activities. They beckon you to come, spend, get lost in the sea of people. Cape Town beckoned me for six days, beckoned me to shop, eat, hike, and try to fill up my brain with the prettiest images possible. And sometimes I feel like that’s what traveling has become to many; trying to fill up your own mental reserve with the prettiest pictures, the best smells, the most comfortable things. And here we all go around trying to capture everything on our cameras so we can give a detailed narrative slide show to our friends back home, full of inflection, pointing out all the pretty things we’ve seen. And the funniest thing, to me, is that we’re all taking the exact same pictures of the exact same things. Table Mountain. The Waterfront. The Beaches. We all go to the exact same places, but stand in different angles, attempting to really capture the space we’re in.

And that bores me, it really does. It becomes grating. It becomes a race against camera battery life, against the elements of sun, wind, sand, and time. We must take the perfect picture before the sun goes down. Must capture a smiling face before it turns into a neutral expression. Must mix the avante garde with the post card, with the avante garde again.

And of course, this wasn’t my entire trip. I did not spend my entire trip attempting to record everything…but there was a rushed feeling to my vacation, a feeling that I must fit in everything, lest I regret missing something. Oh how terrible it would be if I went to Cape Town but didn’t go to Table Mountain. And this pressure is doubly reinforced from everyone in the entire group, who asked me over and over again “Where’d ya go? What did ya do?” Lord. I went somewhere. I did something. I sat. I read. Isn’t that good enough for you?

But now I’m back in Port Elizabeth and, thankfully, there is nothing to do, and nothing to see. I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen the pyramid, the only tourist attraction downtown. I’ve seen the casino that was robbed a couple weeks ago. I’ve seen the townships. I’ve had all those experiences, so it’s OK if I just sit here and write and sleep and do nothing. It’s alright if I take a bath. It’s OK if I just stare at these billowing palm trees scratching my window and think about nothing, because I have some fucking time to think about nothing.

But this doesn’t answer anyone’s questions about Cape Town. What is Cape Town like?

I suppose the answer differs depending on who’s asking the question. Are you an out-of-towner hoping to spend a few days in a beautiful city that just happens to be in Africa? Are you looking for world class dining, luxurious spa treatments, great art galleries, a good theatre community, a bustling African market, gorgeous scenery, white sandy beaches with boulders and the purest tasting water in South Africa? Then yes, by all means, come to Cape Town, soak it all in, relax, enjoy your self.

Are you a study abroad student from America looking to experience a new culture, something radically different from the culture where you were born? Are you looking to antagonize your own relationship to black people? Are you looking to get invited into black people’s homes? Do you want to get to know the locals? Then don’t come here. It’s overspoiled. There are no areas left to be explored. There is no feeling of adventure, just a feeling like you’re walking down a path warn with the soles of tourist feet. It’s all here for you. You don’t even have to raise a finger. Just ask and someone will arrange for a private tour of a game reserve. Just drop a couple hundred rand and someone will show you the entire Nelson Mandela Trail of Tears starting at Robbin Island and looping through the entire city; each and every museum carefully designed to maximize emotional impact and intensify your sadness. You won’t even need to draw your own conclusions, because that might be too time-consuming, so just pick up a copy of lonely planet and familiarize yourself with the taste and feel of every neighborhood, perfectly captured by some broke Harvard grad.

This is Cape Town. Cape Town does tourism, and it does it well. It’s the Los Angeles of South Africa, according to the New York Times. I don’t know if I understand what that means. Are the people there vapid? Materialistic? Cliquey? I don’t know, that’s just what the New York Times said. I was too busy planning my life around the tourist attractions to really even meet any locals.