Africa, Day 3

Cape Town, Sunday

The Penguins at Boulders Beach, a confused story of environmental protection.

To read the story i wrote for my JustMeans blog click here.

Drive to Cape Point

A very beautiful drive around the Cape Peninsula, through Table Mountain National Park, and back again to the city via Camps Bay, the Beverly Hills of South Africa. Our tour also include a too-close encounter with a King Cobra.

Burglary

We arrived back at the guest house to find that someone had broken into our room.

Things taken: Christian’s passport and credit cards, my digital camera, 1 memory card reader, aspirin, a plastic bag, some dvd’s, and 1 stick of deodorant [nope that’s not a joke.]

Things not taken: our laptops, our borrowed [super-]nice camera, my passport. In other words, while it definitely sucked, it could have been much worse. I know these things can happen anywhere, but it is difficult not to let this color my view of South Africa. A fact duly noted by the police, when they arrived. One of the officers seems quite concerned that these events would inspire me to tell everyone back home what happened, cementing their [presumably already] negative view of Africa. I told him not to worry, that I thought Cape Town was very beautiful, but I suppose he did have a valid point. Afterall…I just posted this on my blog.

Side note: while an employee from Mountain Men private security was at our guest house immediately, the police took a bit longer. When Judy, the lady who runs the guest house called them to inquire as to why it was taking so long, she was told “well, you know, there is a lot of crime and we only have one car.”

Hmm…

Intent on deriving some sort of larger cultural insight from the events of the day, Christian and I wondered about our own sometimes-justified, sometimes-not travel-oriented [or Africa-related] paranoia.

I’ll admit that my attitude still bears some resemblance to what it was when my brother first left for the Peace Core; at that time I told him [in an effort to explain our mother’s nervousness about his moving to Mozambique] that “there are scary things everywhere…but Africa has…well…more.”

I’m a bit surprised by my own Africa-induced paranoia, given that I just spent a considerable about of time in the Middle East and pretty much never felt scared for my safety. But, what can I do? It is, apparently, not without some cause.