We are leaving Zimbabwe today. Innocent picked us up at 9:00 for our 11:45 flight. Navigating through the airport was easy and the flight was on time. There was not much to see from the plane. Generally it just looked like completely undeveloped land. Three hours later we arrived in Cape Town. The weather doesn’t look good for the next three days, cold temperatures and rain.
Our Cape Town guide, Rodney, picked us up and delivered us to the hotel. Based on our drive from the airport to the hotel, Cape Town seems like a very modern city however while we were on the highway we passed several former townships, Apartheid segregated areas for nonwhites. They went on for miles and miles and looked desperately poor.
The official unemployment rate is 27% but Rodney says it’s more like 33%. It was very sad and makes me wonder how long it will take to undue the damage done by Apartheid.
The hotel is in a very nice area however all the houses in the area have electric wires on top of the fences to keep people out. The ADT security signs says “Armed Response”. Also we were told not to walk around after dark. Apparently people living in a nearby park tend to mug people. Generally there is a lot of crime because people are so poor and hopeless. Very sad!
Here are pictures of our room.
Cape Town is in a drought and has significant water restrictions. The reservoir levels got as low as 18% and the last 10% is unusable. Citizens of the Cape Town area are only supposed to use 50L per day per person. This means limiting the flushing of toilets, using hand sanitizer instead of washing your hands, and a 90 second shower with a bucket to collect the water while the shower is warming up. We tried to comply but I found the 90 second shower impossible. As a result of these effort the reservoir levels are up to 66% and they must have rose during our visit because we had a lot of rain.
It was raining that evening when we walked to dinner. Unfortunately we got a little lost and I was nervous about wandering around after dark. We were accosted by a young man who had no shoes or rain coat, just a blanket wrapped around him. Eventually he left us alone and we found the restaurant, The Stack. Dinner was very good and we ubered back to the hotel. It was just a couple of blocks and the Uber cost just $2.
That evening we played a game of Mexican train before going to bed.