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The soft white sand of a beach near Cape Town, South Africa.
Each time we arrive in a new place, its character unfolds slowly to us. Some bits are in our faces, others must be coaxed out like a shy child. Sometimes, we are mistaken, and a place grows on us or something causes us to dislike it over time. More often, the first impression takes hold and shapes our image of a place.
We try not to let our expectations play a big part in our reactions, rather to stay open to the experience as it unfolds. Our reality is often different than people who have been to a place before us. I had spent a lifetime hearing about the rude French and found them generally very helpful and charming, if unable to think outside the box. Rumor almost tainted my experience and I’ve become more careful to arrive without expectation.
Arriving in Cape Town, I am delighted. We spent the first couple of days settling in: grocery shopping, making a trip to the tourist center to find a bookstore with atlas road maps and visitor information. We even started this second half of our journey to the Apple iStore to fix a power issue for John’s computer. When we arrived in Paris in February, the power cord was a casualty of a small explosion when we plugged my 110 extension cord into a power converter box, wiping out the electricity to the whole hotel. This time, Best Buy gave John a replacement battery just before we left that was not from the manufacturer, didn’t really fit, and made his computer shut off mid-project a few times. Ironic first day repeat.
Yesterday was our first big tour, one of those hop-on-hop-off double-decker red busses. We’ve found it is a good way to get a quick overview of the layout of a place and see where we might want to return. This one began and ended at the waterfront in town, with a loop through the center of town, around Table Mountain, and back up the Atlantic coast from Hout Bay north to the city.
Arriving back at the apartment, I found myself making comparisons to other places, especially Croatia. I am struck, first, by the cleanliness of the beaches here. The sand is pure white and soft, scattered with boulders in many places. There is no plastic blown about, bags half buried or bottles washed up to the high water mark. Just colors that belong there: white sand, blue water, tan boulders, green kelp washed ashore, and people sunbathing or walking their dogs. This seems to be true even along the undeveloped parts of the coastline where no hotel takes responsibility.
This is a sharp contrast to a beach I remember in Mexico where there was a line in the sand, raked clean in on one side (directly in front of the hotel) and refuse pit on the other. In Croatia, as beautiful as the coastline is, things were not much better. As an example, on Korčula, the small beach right in town below our rental apartment was covered in plastic. The beach that was described in the tour books as the most beautiful on the island sported a heavy mosaic strip of colors where the bushes met the rocks of the beach, a high water line brightly colored by plastic bottles and bags washed ashore or tossed aside by visitors. In Omiš, we were told that the hotel on the beach had stopped taking responsibility for cleaning the waterfront, so the juice boxes and plastic wrappers the school children tossed in the water or over their shoulders stayed on the ground.
The other thing that strikes me is the openness of the people. No averted eyes; they offer warm, open expressions. They wave at the tourists in the passing red bus. Not just the little children, but people from all walks who find themselves nearby when the bus passes. No self-consciousness, rather big waves with unguarded smiles. As I stood on the side of the road, a truck with two workers passed carrying beds, mattresses flopping backward in a comical bow. Seeing me watching, the burly, dark-skinned worker smiled and offered an enthusiastic wave. Or when Marlie and I went out on the beach, she on crutches. A local came directly to us, far out of his way to chat and ask what she had done.
It will be interesting to pass the next few weeks and see how the first impression grows into a lasting vision. Will the two be similar?
