I went over a decade without updating this blog, and I missed out on a lot of meals, a lot of travel, a lot more. I was thinking about that recently. It would be nice, perhaps, to have some sort of blather about some events from the past, perhaps for you few readers, perhaps for the sake of edification somehow. And when I thought about where to start digging back in, I didn't at all consider chronological order or significance. No, what came to mind was how nice it would be to revisit the South Africa trip from 2015.
In August 2015 I made a long trek with multiple stops to Cape Town to attend the IFLA World Congress being held there. I'd never been to an IFLA conference before then, and I haven't been back. At the time I thought it might be an interesting professional opportunity, and it was in its way, but it wasn't a library world I needed to be part of again no matter what city they might go to.
Still, I thought that Cape Town would be a pretty cool place to go to a conference. And, of course, I added on some vacation time so as to make the most of the long trip. Even better, a few days after I got there, Conrad arrived. So while I had some time at the conference without him, I had most of my time in the country (and most of that in Cape Town) with Conrad.
I liked Cape Town. It's a beautiful city, and its setting is a large part of that. I'd seen Table Mountain in photos before, but photos don't do it justice. Heading into the city from the airport, the driver pointed out zebras on the mountain slopes. The first couple of days in Cape Town were grey and rainy,
and the mountain was kind of socked in,
but we got some great views of it after that.
I thought it was especially cool when you could see clouds pouring over it, an effect that the locals apparently know as The Tablecloth.
Clever! And by the end of the trip, we had taken the tram up to the top
(with me keeping myself as calm as possible since I do not care of gondolas or trams like that and the heights that we end up swinging above)
for the chance to roam a little, admire the scenery below,
the wildlife up there (those are dassies),
and the flora,
much of which is endemic to the mountain and only the mountain. So fantastic.
Cape Town is a city, and in some ways, just a mundane city.
The conference center was not too far from our hotel, and I would walk to and from each day, in among plenty of people going to and from that business district for work. Those parts of the city felt much like what we would know here in North America. There were historic parts as well, and we visited them a little.
We saw some fine neighbourhoods whilst on a bus tour, and we saw all the razor wire atop fences and walls around expensive homes. Was the city unsafe, we asked at the hotel. No, they told us, but the levels of income inequality and poverty meant that there was a homelessness problem, and panhandlers were far more likely to accost a pedestrian than a mugger.
To be honest, we stayed within a very small area, the V&A Waterfront.
Dining, shops, hotels, tourist attractions. It was a vibrant, lovely place, and I liked our hotel a lot.
The aquarium was down that way,
the Springboks (rugby) experience was just uphill.
Heck, even the gay bar
that I went to one night for a drag dinner/show with other LGBTQ+ librarians was pretty close.
We dined well all around us (though I decided not to post food photos from the trip, at least not in this entry). Leading along the oceanfront away from where we stayed was a long boardwalk that took me past a stadium
and then onto other neighbourhoods that seemed very nice.
I was still running at the time, and I took advantage of that to get some miles under my feet early in the mornings there.
I know Cape Town has had some problems since our visit, specifically with water shortages. If I went back, I would see it differently, and doubtless some of what I liked so much last time is changed or gone. But I would go back, happily. It was a marvelous city to visit. I may never do IFLA things again (almost certainly not, in fact, but who knows?), but I appreciate that attending that conference gave me the chance to go to South Africa and see that little corner of it for myself.
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