Our final days in The Cape included wonderful touring of the Cape of Good Hope and the wine country.

Although it was overcast for most of the day at The Cape, that doesn’t reduce too much the fantastic scenery. Starting at Cape Town’s popular Camp’s Bay, the group spread out wide getting pictures of this wide and beautiful white-sand beach.

Although I know that most Cape Townians think of Camp’s Bay as their principal swimming beach, I can also tell that the vast majority of people on it are foreigners and snowbirds from Europe. There are hundreds if not thousands of time-shares and luxury rental condos here, and tons of coffee shops and cafes.

This was a particularly vibrant weekend as it’s the week before Easter when many of the long-distance visitors first arrive.

We then began the spectacular Chapman’s Peak Drive. This cliff-hanging tourist route to the Cape of Good Hope passes over Hout Bay, and as usual, the black “shark” flag was waving, so the massive white-sand beach was mostly empty. The scenery here is breath-taking.

But there were remnants of last year’s fires, and while I’ve been coached by people that this is a normal cycle, I think it’s fair to say last year’s was extreme. It canceled the Cape Mountain Bike Marathon – the first time ever, and later we would here from some wineries how they were devastated.

But today it was drizzling! The drought is broken, although there is still a moisture deficit as El Nino slowly fades.

We rode the “Flying Dutchman” to the overlook of the two great oceans, and I recounted to everyone the “Age of Discovery” and fascinating history of the 1400-1500s culminating in Bartolemeu Dias’ rounding of these turbulent seas.

Everyone gazed into the vast ocean that continues to Antarctica, a distance nearly ten times that from where Antarctic ocean voyages leave Ushuaia in Argentina!

We then went to the penguins at Boulders and that’s always so much fun! They were out in full force, if you can say that of a dismal looking and slow-moving penguin! The place was packed, nearly shoulder to shoulder with tourists, but there were hundreds of penguins on display, completely oblivious to their admirers.

Today we visited Eagle Encounters, one of my favorite stops in The Cape. This remarkable raptor rehabilitation center has literally saved the endangered Cape Vulture. Our special private tour by falconer Donald is such fun!

Starting with the Jackal Buzzard, Donald flew Cape Vultures, a barn owl, a gymnogene, a rock kestrel and finally the not-native American vulture that was confiscated from a collector in Cape Town.

As he himself said, the birds all “love him” and that’s why he can show them off – how they fly, how they look and how obediently they stand on our heads!

We had two wine tastings, one at the Cape’s second oldest vineyard and a full cellar tour at the lovely Lanzerac where we’re staying. The group also had several hours in the lovely Afrikaans town of Stellenbosch, so they could visit restored homes from the 17th Century and enjoy some real Afrikaans food for lunch!

Tomorrow we finally get into the bush of Botswana. Stay tuned!

Apartheid is in the spotlight of most sightseeing for visitors to South Africa. It’s not a pleasant tale, but visits of the sort my group took to the Apartheid & Hector Pieterson Museums in Johannesburg and the District Six Museum in Cape Town are uplifting.

Because today’s story of apartheid is how it was ended, and how it must be understood and remembered to prevent it from happening again … anywhere.

Those in my group who visited District Six in Cape Town were led through those dark years in the “Mother City” by resident Joe Schaffers who recounted his personal story.

District Six was one of the oldest and most integrated communities in Cape Town. Residents were often fifth or sixth generation residents and from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds.

They were professionals and blue collar workers. They were commuters and local tradespeople. They embodied an enormous variety of religious groups, from Muslim to Jewish to Christian to Sikh and others.

Borne of the earliest days of Cape Town, many District Six residents carried at least a bit of the legacy of the 18th Century Malay slaves imported to The Cape by the Dutch colonists, although before the 1960s slavery was a topic residents were more prone to hear in discussions of early American than early South African history.

But apartheid changed all that.

“Digging Deeper” is the permanent exhibition theme of District Six as it tirelessly reminds South Africans and visitors alike of the barbaric attempted destruction of this community of 60,000 residents – a tenth of the city’s population in 1966.

The district became an official political municipality of Cape Town in 1867, nearly a century after its earliest residents settled there. Then, almost exactly 100 years later in 1966 the South Africa apartheid government advised the 1900 families living there that they were being “removed” – by designated race – to ghettos outside the city.

They were to be separated and removed so that whites controlling the apartheid government could develop this prime real estate in the city for themselves.

To me personally one of the most stinging parts of this story is that there was hardly any protest by District Six residents. There were frantic attempts by many to be excluded from the removal, or to be granted new race designations to assure removal to better ghettos, or to preclude the action by the government by moving elsewhere themselves, first.

But there were no protests – violent or otherwise – as characterized the opposition to apartheid in Johannesburg (Soweto).

Those of us who visited the Apartheid and Hector Pietersen Museums learned of these heroic oppositions. All of them began non-violently, but when police shot and killed 600 secondary school students in June, 1976, for protesting a change of language instruction from English to Afrikaans, the bloody imprint to revolution was intractably laid.

The individual stories in the actual places where this history took place is a moving experience for anyone. Personally I think it’s uniquely important today.

The immigration problems effecting Europe, much less South Africa itself (see this earlier blog of mine), and the immigration issue central to the American political campaign are all analogous to the issues that birthed apartheid.

“Apartheid” is an Afrikaans construction meaning “apartness,” a belief that society best develops when its people are separated by race. Apartheid was brutal, effective, and “legal.”

Apartheid was condoned not just by the majority of white South Africans, but by many Americans like Ronald Reagan and Pat Buchanan. It was opposed by many, if not more Americans, too, like Richard Lugar and Ron Dellums.

But apartheid has absolutely zero place in modern societies. Perhaps when the Neanderthals were fleeing the Denosovians it might have been useful. But the world today is both actually and conceptually far too congested to think we can live and develop apart from one another.

I’m extremely proud of my fellow travelers, today. Most vacationers don’t schedule much if any of their precious R&R to enter the darknesses of the past, but that’s what’s necessary for any traveler who visits South Africa and wants to understand it.

For the last two days we’ve been traveling on the Blue Train, one of the world’s premiere luxury trains.

We boarded the 10-car exclusive train in Pretoria and headed south through the heavy industrial areas of the Transvaal. I think people are impressed by the extent of South African industry, but what was a surprise to all of us was the massive Vereeniging Steel Works which went on and on as the train rushed past.

But it was mostly vacant and eerily quiet. The plant closed last September, terminating 400 jobs. Reason? Steel’s cheaper if bought from China.

Soon, though, we were entering the great southern end of the country’s massive bread basket. The first part was almost as depressing as seeing the closed steel plant, because the area has been suffering a severe drought. For the first time in most people’s memory, South Africa will be importing corn this year.

But as if to turn around our sinking moods, we entered a fierce thunderstorm with lightning and hail. It lasted most of the afternoon, and as the train left the heavy overcast the beautiful sunset introduced us to the beginning of the Great Karoo.

The train has been operating since the 1920s in one form or another. There is now another luxury train, Rovos Rail, but I prefer this less pretentious and more business-oriented service.

Prices are similar and with today’s extremely depressed Rand, the train was so full that people were waiting outside hoping that we didn’t arrive!

After your private butler takes you into your elegant suite and shows you all the bells and whistles, the train begins and I for one, ordered a big pot of tea with cold milk!

It came in elegant, heavy silver and was among the best tea I’ve ever had in South Africa!

The group would meet from time to time in the Club Lounge car. All drinks, even premium champagne and spirits are included, and when I entered the car one table was piled high with sweets and pastries.

Lunch is as big as dinner (unfortunately) but it gave us all the opportunity to try a variety of premium South African wines. The food was absolutely exquisite.

Wifi depended upon which area the train was speeding through, but if the area had wifi, we did, too.

I returned from dinner with my bed beautifully made and three large chocolates on the pillow!

I woke myself so that I could see sunrise over the Karoo. The Karoo is South Africa’s Mojave desert. I watched a number of raptors over the massive landscapes plus saw gemsbok, steinbok and springbok … and, of course, thousands of angora sheep.

What was most amazing were these sheep farms. A windmill provided water and solar panels provided electricity and they were all built near the train tracks and spaced, oh, maybe 25 miles apart!

It is outstandingly beautiful in a very lonely way, and I just couldn’t help but try to imagine the lives of these remote farmers. I was able to follow the route nearly mile by mile on my computer using wifi, and almost all of the handful of Karoo towns were settled in the mid 1800s by Boer trekkers.

After our final lunch we left the Karoo, climbed the jutting Swartberg Mountains, went through several tunnels (one 8 miles long) and entered a completely new world: the wine country, starting around Worcester.

It’s a landscape hard to beat anywhere in the world: lush, green vineyards under the cutting and ancient bare granite of the mountains.

We pulled into the “Mother City” about 35 hours after we left. What a wonderful, happy, relaxing and palate-extraordinary journey!

We spent the entire day touring Johannesburg and Soweto as I began my annual Cape/Bot safari.

We drove a lot, though the super luxurious areas and into the slums. We visited outstanding museums, including the Apartheid Museum and Hector Pietersen Museum. It’s an eye-opener for most first-time visitors.

I don’t think there’s any place in Africa that suffers from as many misconceptions and stigmas as Joburg. The city is immense, chaotic, congested and the smog got to me, today.

But parts of it like the suburb of Sandton where we’re staying are more luxurious than many of the finest suburbs of big cities in America. There are more private swimming pools per residence in Joburg than in Dallas. You’ll see more Benz’ and Porches than in San Francisco.

But we also saw the decaying side of the city that authorities are trying so hard to rehabilitate. The end of apartheid resulted in situations few negotiating its end anticipated.

The brilliance of the new constitution meant that refugees were welcome, and boy did they come literally by the hundreds of thousands! Downtown Joburg today is where these Nigerians, Somalians, Chadians, Zimbabweans and so many others eke out a difficult existence.

Technically, they’re all illegal, but also technically under the new constitution, they have the right to remain and enjoy public services if they weren’t detained when first entering.

So the city decayed rapidly. Crime escalated. South Africa doesn’t have the resources that say, Germany or Sweden has to provide for these immigrants and so they developed ghettos of extreme poverty and depravity.

I think it’s turning around, and some major banks and corporations like Anglo-American are relocating into the city center.

There are equally reversed misconceptions of Soweto. Most of Soweto is composed of lovely residential districts of what local residents fondly refer to as “matchbox houses.” They are all tidy, colorful, maintained and the dozen or so of separate districts all seem to display some unique style.

Commerce is booming in Soweto, from manufacturing industries to mom-and-pop corner stores. We lunched at a traditional restaurant called Sakhumzi while being entertained by some exceptional singers and dancers. “Sakhumzi” means “to build” or “builder” and is the perfect way to characterize Soweto, today.

But it was the power of the museums of the area that everyone will remember. Of course they all focused on the oppression of apartheid, so it was a rather heavy tour.

In addition to the Apartheid Museum, we visited Nelson Mandela’s first home in Soweto, the Catholic Church in Soweto which was essentially the gathering place for everything political, and the Hector Pietersen Museum.

This museum is named after the youngest child (he was 13) of 600 students shot by police in the June, 1976 Soweto uprising.

I’ve been to all these place before, but it was also a very special day for me. This is the day my state, Illinois, votes in the presidential primary. The parallels of my country today with pre-apartheid South Africa are chilling.

Jan Smuts and J.M.B. Hertzog were both conservative Afrikaners (like say, Bush and Romney) who were ousted from power by a tricky mad dog, D.F. Malan, who like Trump rose to power on an angry and confused constituency. Malan once in power quickly crafted what became one of the most onerous, oppressive societies in history.

I really think it is a remarkable comparison. The realization sent chills down my spine.

Tomorrow we board the Blue Train, one of the most magnificent, luxurious trains on earth, for our 2-day journey to the Mother City, Cape Town! Stay tuned!