Swimming With Sharks In Cape Town

My relationships with cities tend to be my longest ones.

When I was 15, London and I had our first date. We fell in love immediately and I promised him I’d return; I did last June and he charmed me all over again.

New York and I met when I was 16; I’d seen and heard of him in the movies and pop songs, but it wasn’t until we had Chinese food in Soho together that we really connected.

My caprice with Paris took a while to bloom. We met for the first time when I was 15, but I was with my family and it’s impossible to flirt around my parents, so I returned when I was 16 to give it another try—it was nice, but nothing special. Paris and I didn’t truly bond until we spent four weeks together in my 17th summer, exploring art museums, taking day trips to Versailles, and eating salads on street corners. That was when our relationship blossomed.

About a week ago, I met Cape Town.

I’ve not had butterflies like this since I first saw the boys’ water polo team in high school. Cape Town greeted our ship at 6 in the morning, and let me just tell you right now: he is undoubtedly the best-dressed city I’ve ever met.

Sitting on the balcony at Fork restaurant in downtown Cape Town, drinking sangria and eating tapas, my friends Kevin and Parke and I decided that the only way to describe the cruise into Cape Town is "striking."

"Spectacular" sounds like a New York Times Broadway critic praising Wicked, "amazing" is cliché, "beautiful" lacks the necessary luster, and "stunning" doesn’t capture the sheer enormity of the approach. "Striking" is as close as we could get and even that doesn’t completely communicate the splendor of Cape Town’s landscape.

Table Mountain (actually a plateau) stands behind the city, stalwart and prominent, while Lion’s Head rests to the right. We arrived just in time to watch the sun bathe the mountainside in its viscous, golden glow. I was told by some of my mother’s friends that arriving in Cape Town by ship is an overwhelming experience, an impossible concept to comprehend without being there.

Cape Town is the first port so far that I felt was genuinely fun.

That’s not to say it was in any way better than the other ports because I don’t think “have fun” should always be my mission statement when traveling.

Sometimes, in order to learn and grow and benefit most from the experiences we endure, those experiences have to be difficult. They have to challenge us in some way and make us think, so maybe the mission statement should be to "put myself in an uncomfortable situation and then find comfort there,” and in that way we can allow our comfort zones to expand and our tolerance levels to rise, fostering a more accepting, unified community.

That being said, , which was admittedly arduous at times because I was so far out of my comfort zone for much the five days, Cape Town was a much appreciated return to somewhat familiar territory. The weather reminded me of California in late May, the language is the same and I spent at least a day exploring the area around the port on my own and listening to street performers. I even had flowers and butterflies painted all down my arm and on my cheek, which the little girls on board found enchanting.

It’s tough to condense my time in Cape Town into one experience because I did so many different things. I met a dozen Cape Town University students at a small café, spent a night in a backpacker’s hostel, tasted a number of fantastic South African wines, and talked with some of the most attractive people I have ever seen at a bar called Caprice in Camp’s Bay.

I also saw a play at the Baxter Theatre about the South African Border War and the post-traumatic stress disorder plaguing the men forced to fight, spent a night in a township right outside the city with a lovely African family, and visited a number of schools in the townships where students sang and danced for us.

The last morning, however, I felt the most proud of myself because I faced a very serious fear. Sharks.

I spent about 20 minutes in Great White shark-infested waters and saw a 13-foot shark underwater from a distance of no more than two feet. Yes, I was in a sturdy metal cage and in absolutely no danger, but I still felt accomplished. On the boat ride back to the harbor, a pod of nearly 300 dolphins came up to help me celebrate my triumph. (I’m sure my mother is massively jealous of that—she thinks she has some sort of spiritual connection with dolphins...)

Overall I’d say my experiences ran the gamut from educational to exhilarating to just plain fun, but Cape Town is the kind of city I can imagine spending years in but still feel like I hardly know anything about it. That should make our romance engaging for years to come. As a matter of fact, I’m already looking into opportunities to continue our affair this summer by taking a job with a shark cage diving company (pretty please, Momma!).

P.S. I chose to avoid dedicating a portion of this blog entry to the effects of apartheid in South Africa, because I firmly believe that if one does not know enough about a topic to give a well-informed rendition of it, they ought to not speak on such topic (that’s my tip to politicians and newly-of-age voters by the way). I didn’t spend my time in South Africa exploring that aspect of Cape Town, so I’m not going to comment on it. I will say that according to most of the South Africans I spoke with, South Africa has made huge leaps of progress since the end of apartheid in 1994, but the gap between rich and poor is vast and the areas around Cape Town starkly contrast the Westernized hotels, restaurants, and houses in the city.