Cape Town Tour Part II

And on to part two of the Cape Town tour.
 

Here is Cape Town's Stadium for the World Cup was held in South Africa last year. It has quite a unique basket-weave type pattern that you cannot quite see from this shot but is very neat up close.

We continued on the the V&A Waterfront. This used to be a fully functioning dry dock but has now been converted to a really nice shopping district.

This is the main shopping mall which is quite beautiful on the inside, probably the nicest mall I've ever seen. It also has lots of luxury shops for those of my readers who care. Great shopping didn't really come to my mind when I came to South Africa, but here they actually have more of the American stores than we do in Canada. Prices are comparable.

The other thing about this mall, and I suspect this is true across the country, is that the concept of a food court doesn't really exist. My roommate and I were starving when we arrived and wanted to get a quick lunch. But everything here is sit down and requires service. We did eventually find a Jugo Juice type place and went through the take out line and then sat in the seated section...but I think we technically did that wrong.

After the mall, we headed back to Stellenbosch. Along the way, we drove through the Cape Flats which is where the townships (shanty towns) of Cape Town are. The main highway goes right through them.

These are shots taken right on the bus as we drove along. The Cape Flats stretches on for around 20 km our guide said. Some of the houses have electricity (you can see the powerlines in the lower photo) but many do not. Same for running water. Our guide said though that people are very proud of their township and even if they do start to earn more money, they will simply build a better house on top of where their old house was. So you'll get relatively nice brick houses in between shack houses. Townships are opening up more though, and our guide mentioned that there are guest houses in there now where one can stay for a few nights and experience township life. Apparently in Kayamandi, the township outside Stellenbosch, there is an excellent restaurant as well.

It was a bit of a sobering drive back to Stellenbosch though.