Cape Town's for tourists. While it has, to now, been a blind supposition of mine, I know it now. Using Google Earth, I located some ships in Cape Town harbour and decided it was only proper that I visit them — having visited Kalk Bay yesterday.
Fences are strange things; some are hidden in plain sight. The harbour's off limits for the reason given me by the security guard when first I tried to enter it about a month ago. "No man, it's the Americans. Ever since those Arabs flew those planes into those buildings..."
Yeah, whatever. I know the U.S. had put pressure on the South African port authorities to tighten up sometime last year but, shit, you don't deny a coastal citizen access to his or her own harbour. We were left with what is left of Cape Town harbour, a tourist-friendly playground of malls and eateries smothering what's left of a corner of the harbour barely working.
Never mind. The seals don't.
Wherever possible, we avoided the tourist side of the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront. It's not easy. You can take a ride to Robben Island for ZAR150.00 or, for R1,800.00 fly the peninsula for an hour in a refurbished Huey. Hour-long rides on yachts and sight-seeing boats cost anywhere between R150.00 and R250.00 per person. It's a bit rough on Capetonians but, hey, I saw plenty local people headed out to the Island. More, judging from the high-density of Mercs, BMWs and similarly priced cars and SUVs — Lamborghinis are a rarity; many Capetonians have more-than-enough money to blow.
Long live the revolution. Aluta continua.
I dunno. Perhaps I'm bitter. Or nostalgic, or romantic, or twisted or a bit of the lot. I want a harbour with full quays and empty quays; a grubby, oily, fuel-grimed harbour replete with twisting railway lines and rust-laden trucks, long lines of cable twisting along the quayside for no apparent purpose, miles of empty warehouses broken by the far-flung shadows of myriad silent derricks, the sound of diesel engines throbbing aboard strangely-shaped vessels for no apparent reason, the occasional foreign sailors staggering drunk back to their ships or ejecting sad whores from said same. Something there is about a harbour...
No luck though. Sometimes, things just ain't like they used to be.
