Table Top Mountain stares right down at you when you are at birth along the quayside, as flat as the postcards show it to be.
South Africa, I am here, you are as beautiful as everybody tells me you are, very scenic and very " grandiose ".
Well I managed to get some shore side time here, not much but enough for Capetown to make it's impression on me!!.
I went ashore with some of the other officers on the same watch as I.
We were all very curious to see this very well talked about country, if I remember correctly, it was President Jozua Francois Naudet who was in power at this time,I believe, (1967-1968).
The very first thing we noticed was the awful reality of what Apartheid was all about.
Seat benches, shops, train station quays, walk ways, bars, you name it....
For blacks only................Ditto for..............Whites only..
This shocked me coming from a democratic country ie: United Kingdom.
Ignoring what we saw, we looked, registered many thing mentally, but continued our walk around the city.
We visited the Park at the end of the main street,very interesting. I fed large numbers of tree squirrels there, cute little critters.
As a tourist visiting Capetown, my thoughts were deep. I couldn't live here, you could feel the civil tension in the air around you.
What if we made conversation with the blacks or coloured people as we know them today?
What would happen to us, it's hardly worth thinking about, you just don't do it.
Beautiful city, spoilt by inhuman Politics or Policies.................
That's my thoughts.
I managed to get to the top of Tabletop Mountain, by cable car, only to find it was not at all flat, but scattered with very large Boulders, so we went into the restaurant for a nice cup of tea and a sandwich, as every fine young Englishman should do.
An check out the scenery down below , after a nice "cuppa" from the local view point.
I think we were in Capetown for at least 2 days, refuelling,taking on provisions etc.
I had been perturbed a little about what I had seen here,
I did not like what I SAW IN FACT..
Segregation, in it's purest form, disgusting and inhuman...............
I thought about this a lot for a few days,,
Especially when we sailed for Durban and Port Elizabeth, where in fact I did not go ashore because of this Apartheid policy..
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