Travel

S.Africa trip with a lying tour guide

cape

Cape of Good Hope. Photo | Courtesy

Don’t always believe all tour guides. Mine, on a recent trip to Cape Town, South Africa, told us a fib.

That the Cape of Good Hope is the southernmost tip of Africa where the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean meet. That’s not true. Well, not entirely.

Indeed, the Indian Ocean does meet the Atlantic Ocean at this point but that’s not the southernmost tip of Africa.

It is Cape Agulhas, which is some 180 kilometres away. Obviously we didn’t see it. But what we did enjoy tremendously was the drive to see his lie; the Cape of Good Hope called the Chapman’s Peak Drive, linking Hout Bay and Noordhoek. It’s scenic. Its winding wide roads cradled against hills that overlook breathtaking vistas of the sea and land below.

We stopped at Clifton beach, not to see the beach but the exclusive and most expensive real estate named after that beach.

“Will Smith has a house here,” said our tour guide, “so does Celine Dion and Nicholas Cage.”

We believed everything he was telling us because we hadn’t discovered that Cape of Good Hope wasn’t the southernmost tip of Africa.

Houses were out of Hollywood; massive glass windows and elaborate balconies facing the sea. Short elegant driveways, hanging gardens. We noticed something peculiar; most — if not all— of the house had very small vehicles—minis— parked in their driveways, not a single 4x4 was in sight.

We decided to walk down the paved pathway to see the topless beach. It’s hard not to go to other beaches with a chip on your shoulder when you come from a land with magnificent white sandy beaches like ours (“ours” being Kenyan, if you are wondering.)

It’s not even patriotism, because really I can’t claim to be the one who can happily fall on his sword for the country if it came right to it, but it’s just that our beaches rob you off your beach virginity. Then you see Clifton beach and you are very impressed. It was wide and white with the houses of the wealthy rising around it on one side.

As we drove up out through the real estate I didn’t see Cage or Will, but I saw a man in shorts (probably a Silicon Valley genius) walk bare foot on tarmac from his house headed towards the beach, a cup of coffee in hand.

“These houses are mostly owned by foreigners,” our tour guide said.

We believed him because we hadn’t learnt at that time that the Cape of Good Hope is not the southernmost tip of Africa.

Because the Cape of Good Hope is in a nature reserve (park fees are about Sh1,500) I’m afraid you will have to see baboons, a rare species called Chacma baboons. That might be good news for some of you. It wasn’t for me.

These entitled baboons just sat on the road causing a traffic snarl up, but nobody seems to mind, certainly not the excited oriental tourists thrusting a forest of long lenses through their windows to capture these primates groom themselves in the sun.

Sometimes they climb on the roof of the car and just lie there which means you can’t drive off with them on your roof because they might fall off and break a wrist and you might be jailed for life for animal cruelty.

There are also 250 species of birds in the reserve and zebras and elands. But the baboons had ruined my mood.

We finally got to the Cape of Good Hope which is a narrow peninsula jutting from the sea. It’s rocky and it’s windy but we were so thrilled and privileged to be there because if you remember correctly we were told that it was the southernmost tip of Africa.

This place has an exploration history that dates back 15 century when the Europeans docked there in search of wealth. If you look further up you will see the lighthouse erected at Cape Point , instrumental as a navigational landmark for sailors.

“You can walk all the way up,” said our tour guide, Well, although the route up is scenic and paved, it’s far. We were wise enough not to listen to him and paid Sh1,400 for two to get onto a funicular called the Flying Dutchman which took us up to the lighthouse in three minutes.

The reason we went up there was because the tour guide had sworn that it was possible to see the Statue of Liberty (yes, in New York) through their very powerful telescopes. I’m Kenyan, I’m trusting so it’s not my fault that I believed him. Suffice it to say I didn’t see any statues. Of liberty or otherwise.

On our way back to the city (we turned down the offer to go see penguins in Boulders Beach and instead had great seafood ) we passed through Simon’s Town on the east of the peninsula. It was a gorgeous innocent-looking town clustered by the sea. It seemed like a place people still talked to their neighbours.

“I love this town,” I told our guide, “but if I lived here I would rather live here as a Chacma baboon.” He laughed.

It’s because you want to live in a place that isn’t so beautiful so that you leave to go on holiday in a place that is beautiful.

We loved our tough guide. I’d choose him again because he had little marvellous anecdotes about legends and places and he was a knowledgeable guide, if not a little too fantastical. Plus he played music that we liked— Zimbabwean.

I forgave him for lying to us that the Cape of Good Hope is the southernmost tip of Africa.

In fact, I would definitely use him again as a guide if he promised to use a different route to Cape of Good Hope that didn’t involve us laying eyes on those narcissistic baboons.