Bethany Webb
Bethany Webb
Bethany Webb is currently a student with a love for travel and writing. Her various adventures all over the world have shaped her writing in many different. She has previously published two poems, but is trying her hand at nonfiction.
The Cape of Good Hope
Chances are, even if you’ve never been there, you have probably heard of the Cape of Good Hope. However, if you haven’t heard of it, or if you have but don’t know what it is, you’re probably wondering what the Cape of Good Hope is. Well, the Cape of Good hope is one of the southernmost points in Africa, but it is also a historical landmark as well. When the Europeans first discovered this cape in the 15th century, it allowed them to create the first full-water route from Europe to Asia. This made travel between the two much easier, and helped trade flourish.
However, these achievements didn’t come for free, as the cape is commonly referred to as the “Graveyard of Ships” due to the fact that the cape’s coast is littered with dangerous rocks and the weather can be very temperamental. In fact, almost 3,000 ships have crashed and sunk along the Cape of Good Hope because of these factors. With all this being said, you are probably wondering why this is called the Cape of Good Hope when so many ships have sunk there? Well, it’s called the Cape of Good Hope because the Europeans thought that the discovery of an all-water route to Asia was a good omen of the things to come. It gave them hope for the future (which they did not know was full of sunken ships) and therefore they decided to call it the Cape of Good Hope.
Now that I’ve made sure that you know what the Cape of Good Hope is, it is time for you to hear the story of my visit there. It was an interesting visit, that’s for sure. We exit out of the bright red bus that we have been sitting in for the last hour at least. The bus is a bright, almost neon, red with the words “Cape Town” plastered in yellow on the side. It is almost headache-inducing to look at for me, but that might be because of how the sun reflects off the paint. It’s a very windy day on the coast, making it hard for me to see due to the fact my hair is blowing in my face, regardless of the fact I have it in a hair tie.
Before we even have time to take in the sight that is the Cape of Good Hope, our guide tells us that we have an hour and ten minutes to explore the scenic area that we have been dropped off in. Once the time is over, we need to be back at the meeting place so that we can head to our next destination.
I turn around, taking in the Cape of Good Hope. As mentioned before, it is a very windy day, but the sun is not too bright, making it a very nice day to be visiting the Cape of Good Hope. Up ahead, I see the funicular that we were told about before we got here. It takes you up closer to the top of the scenic area where a small lighthouse resides. There’s a sit down restaurant that appears to only sell seafood dishes, it is almost completely empty. Next to the sit down restaurant is a sandwich shop that sells take away lunches and it appears to be the place that everyone is going for lunch, so we decide to go there too.
It’s a little before lunch time, but our guide told us that there would not be another chance for us to get lunch at any of the other stops. We walk into the sandwich shop and are hit with the best (personal opinion) smell in the world: Baking bread. We order our sandwiches and chips
(american version), taking them outside to eat. We sit down at one of the only open outdoor tables to enjoy our lunch before we go up to the lighthouse.
There is a large group of black and white birds that are loitering around the table where people are eating, attempting to steal as much food as possible. Sometimes the birds would fly up and try to dive at the tourists eating their lunch (I’m sure you see where this is going…). My grandmother opens the bag that holds our lunch, distributing the sandwiches which are each wrapped individually. I got a chicken sandwich with avocado, and just as I’m going to take a bite of my sandwich, one of the birds dives into my hands as the sandwich is still in my mouth. In doing this, I drop the sandwich (that is still mostly wrapped in paper) on the floor.
For some reason, the lunch shop had cut my sandwich (which was not nearly big enough to need to be cut in half) in half. Because of this, the bird only got one half of my sandwich. Well, that is before a different bird was able to grab the piece of chicken that made up the meat in the second half of the sandwich. Now, I was left with a piece of bread with some lettuce, a single tomato slice, and some avocado. A wonderfully balanced meal, I know (in case you were wondering, it did not keep my blood sugar up for the rest of the day).
Still hungry, and more than a little annoyed, I follow the rest of my family to the funicular ticket line. There are only a couple of other people waiting for tickets, but most everyone else is still getting lunch. We purchase our tickets and are sent to go wait in another line for the funicular. It only takes about four or five minutes for us to get into one of the funiculars to get to the top. The ride itself is only about nine or ten minutes, making it way faster than if you had walked up the whole hill.
The funicular doesn’t take you all the way to the top, it leaves you at a little gift shop and to get to the actual top where the lighthouse is, you have to go up a couple flights of stairs. I’m not sure what the stairs are made out of, but they are very slippery. It takes ten or fifteen minutes to get to the top and the lighthouse. By the time we get to the top, I’m panting and even hungrier than I was before. There are a lot of people taking photos and admiring the view, making it hard to actually see what we came up here for, but once we do I realize why we came.
The view is breathtaking. The ocean below us is a brighter blue than any water I have seen in the US. It goes as far as the eye can see, that bright blue ocean. Looking at it, I realize why it is called the “Graveyard of Ships”. There have to be at least a couple dozen sharp rocks peppering the coast. I can almost see all those ships just crashing into those rocks, their hulls being torn apart in a matter of seconds with no chance for repair.
We take a few photos before heading down the stairs again, going far faster than when we went up. After a couple minutes, we got back to the funicular station. There is no line, even though there are dozens of people at the top of the scenic point. It takes a few minutes before the funicular gets back to the top, and when it does only a couple people actually get off.
Once we get back down to the area with the restaurants and parking lot, we head to the place that our guide told us to meet them at. We find that the bus is still at the meeting point, and decide to store our stuff in it so that we don’t have to hold all the things we have collected over the day.
Soon enough, the rest of the tour group arrives, looking no worse for the wear. A couple people look like they also had their lunch stolen by the demonic birds, and I’m happy that I’m not the only one who looks visibly hungry. Our guide gets out of the bus where he had been waiting for the last hour and fifteen minutes. He counts us to make sure that everyone is back, and when he’s finished counting he tells us that we each have two options for what we want to do next. He tells us that our next stop is another scenic point down by the coast, roughly a couple miles by bus, but only about a mile and a half by foot. We can either take the bus to the next stop, or we can hike to the next stop with him.
Me and the rest of my family decided to go with the guide and hike to our next destination. In fact, most people opt for the hike, but a few choose to take the bus. Most of the people who chose the bus had already hiked all the way up to the lighthouse, and were tired from that.
Our guide leads us to the beginning of the trail to our next stop. He tells us that since it is pretty windy today, the sand might be blowing into our eyes and pelting our skin, so we might want to make sure that we’re paying attention to where we’re walking. The hike starts off relatively tame, with just some stairs made of dirt and wood. Of course, there is a fair amount of sand, and as the guide said, it is pelting us. The whole time I walk down the stairs, I’m looking at the ground to try and make sure that I don’t get too much sand in my eyes. Most other people are also taking precautions to try and mitigate the amount of sand in their eyes.
My hair is pulled back in a ponytail, but the wind very quickly voids the usefulness of it by pulling most of my hair out of the hair tie. With my hair in my eyes, along with sand, I continue to walk down the stairs until they turn into a wooded boardwalk. Now, when you picture a boardwalk, you are probably seeing a flat wooden trail with minimal elevation change. This boardwalk however, is not flat at all and is occasionally missing entire wooden planks. This, along with the strengthening wind, is causing many people to trip and fall. Every once and a while, I have to place a steadying hand on my grandfather in front of me so that I don’t fall and I’m not the only one doing this, and most people with family are using them as steadying posts.
Now, I was doing exceptionally well (for myself) at not falling over and injuring myself, with only the occasional steadying hand to keep me upright. That is, until an especially strong gust of wind blew even more sand and hair in my eyes and as I’m wiping my eyes, I trip over one of the missing boards in the path. I twist my ankle as I go down, but not hard enough to actually injure it (as in sprain or break it). But just because I didn’t sprain/break it, doesn’t mean I didn’t hurt it. In fact, I bruised it bad enough that it hurt for the rest of the week, and it took even longer than that for the bruise to fade.
I get up pretty quick and I’m able to make it seem like I just tripped and got back up without getting injured. I notice that my hand, where I caught myself before face planting, is bleeding a little bit from the old weathered wood boards. Not hard enough to require anything more than a little bit of cleaning to make sure it doesn’t manifest into something worse, though.
We continue to walk along the boardwalk until it turns into an even sandier trail, not made out of wood this time. The walk continues like this until we see a steep hill up ahead. I’m momentarily worried that we will have to climb it, which I am not prepared for, until our guide
turns around to talk about the next section of the trail. He says that in case we were wondering, we are a little more than three quarters finished with the hike, and the next section is going to be a descent into our next destination.
We keep walking on the sandy trail until we come to a fork in the path. One direction clearly leads up that steep hill, and the other leads to an even steeper descent. Our guide leads us in the direction of the descent. When we get to where it actually starts, I notice it might be even more difficult than I originally thought it would. The trail is thin, barely allowing for both of your feet to be next to each other. It snakes down a steep hill into a parking lot next to a rocky beach. Not only is it a very thin and steep trail, but it is also covered with tons of loose sand, making it slippery in that the sand will pull you down with it should it start to move.
Looking up from the trail, I can now see that the trail up the other hill is very rocky and some of the people who are going up it are sending rocks down in their wake, making me glad I’m not hiking on that trail. Our guide goes down first, using some of the roots sticking out from the side of the hill to stabilize himself and prevent the sand from making him trip. A few people start the descent, none of them get down nearly as easily as our guide, since he has led this tour so many times before.
Soon enough, it is my turn to head down. The rest of my family has already gone and are waiting at the bottom. I start down the trail, using the roots to keep me upright. The sand and my bruised ankle are not helping me get down easily, as I slip on the sand and fall backwards into a sort of crab pose before getting back up. After a few more minutes of struggle, I finally slip to the bottom of the hill, landing on my backside like the graceful swan of a person I am.
While the rest of our tour is struggling to get down the trail, me and my family wait in a short line to take a photo with a sign that says “Cape of Good Hope: The Most Southwestern Point of the African Continent”. The line doesn’t take too long to move, as most people take a photo or two and then move on. By the time we get to the front of the line and take our photos, the rest of the people who chose to go on the hike have gotten down the hill and are hanging out in the parking lot with our guide.
He tells us that we have ten more minutes before we all have to be on the bus so that we can leave. Since we have already taken all the photos we wanted to take, me and my family slowly walk to where our bright red bus is parked. We take a little while to get there, enjoying the fresh air before we have to go on the long drive back, which we are not excited for.
We get on the bus, the rest of the tour group not far behind. I get to my seat and stare out the window as the bus engine starts up, the entirety of the group now on the bus. Slowly, the beautiful view fades as our bus pulls out of the parking lot. Sights like these make me wish to myself that I could live in a place where views like this are normal, makes me wish that I could wake up everyday to something like this and not to my treeless suburban home.