THE sun was shining high in the sky on the day we drove to the Cape of Good Hope. As in any city, the first trick is to get out of town.
The morning traffic was bustling children on, their way to school had paused to feed the squirrels in the Company Gardens traders were busy putting out their wares on the streets daily markets compete with the covered elegant shopping malls.
The city is coming down with statues everywhere you look there's someone on a plinth pointing a finger or reading the Good Book or looking however misguidedly into the future. There's Cecil Rhodes and General Jan Smuts and then Jan Van Riebeeck and his wife Maria looking very important at the end of Adderley Street, more or less in pride of place.
Since almost everything and everywhere is called Van Riebeeck something, you become interested in this pair and wonder what exactly they did. Whatever it was, it was a long time ago in 1652. Apparently, the sailors who followed Diaz and Da Gama and the lads round the Cape used to be nearly dead with scurvy by the time they got down as far as the end of Africa and could murder a plate of fresh vegetables. This is what the Van Riebeeks provided they grew things and got fresh water ready for weary travellers heading east.
The story goes that they meant to be a self contained little victualling station, minding their own business. But they didn't have enough crops and cattle and minerals for the demand so they began trading with the local Hottentots and that's really more or less how it all began.
Down the little peninsula to the Cape of Good Hope, it's all dotted with little resorts, swimming places, apartment blocks and guest houses called Bay View, Sea View, Ocean View and also many guest houses called Van Riebeecks low, white houses with arches in them built into cliffs. Heavy security is very obvious everywhere big iron bars on windows, electric gates, and the words Armed Response 24 Hours A Day.
Then you're at Hout Bay, which is utterly beautiful like Inch Strand in Kerry, with the weather.
In Hout Bay, there's a restaurant called The Rumbling Tum. I was just looking at it and wondering what kind of test marketing they had done to settle on that name, when a family got out of a station wagon to examine it as a possible place for lunch. They were from Scotland and it looked as if the holiday so far had not been untouched by stress and strife.
"This looks like a likely place," said the lather, who was suffering from heat and thirst.
"Well, it should be a home from home for you, judging by the noises you've been making getting here," said his wife.
Why did she say that? Couldn't she have said Yes to The Rumbling Tum, or No?
The son said "I don't know it's not actually on the beach what's the point in coming all this far for a pint and not being on the beach?"
If he had come that far only for a pint, why didn't he just go in and sink it?
The daughter in law, who was the width of a ballpoint pen, said "I don't know, a place with a name like that it could be full of food that's all deep fried. You know, dipped in batter and fried in fat." Everyone knows what deep fried means. She had never eaten anything deep fried in her life. Why could she not continue in her abstentionist policies and let those in the family she had married into follow their pattern?
The sunny morning was full of yachts out in the bay, bougainvillea on the walls and questions in the air.
Who could have thought The Rumbling Tum a good name?
Why do people who have chosen to holiday together tear each other to bits?
Why do some of us believe we can change the world and make the human race a much happier tribe if it could only be taught to think for 10 seconds before it opened its mouth?
NONE of these questions was answered so we went on south over Chapmans Peak, the road a bit like the Conor Pass, and then past beaches full of mad, wonderful penguins to the big National Park which is what they have made of the land around the actual Cape of Good Hope.
You can't buy land there, build there, camp there, have a fire or feed the animals. But you can drive through it and marvel at where the Atlantic meets the Indian Ocean, probably somewhere out there where there's a big ridge of white, fluffy, wave filled water looking like a surfer's idea of ecstasy.
There's a souvenir shop, a cafe and plans for a funicular right up to the very top at Cape Point itself, but the nicer place to go is the little beach they call Good Hope which is made up entirely of crushed shells. You just look out into a huge amount of sea, knowing that if you went in a straight line one way it would be South America, and the other way Australia, and straight ahead, the South Pole.
It silenced people. They sat around on rocks or sand dunes and looked out for a long time, mesmerised.
And we all took meaningless pictures of it and brought them back to Japan and Texas and Dusseldorf and Dublin and looked at them, pleased. Because even though it might look like a bit of sea to the rest of you, to those who stood on that beach in the sunshine and thought about the past, it looks like a lot more.
ON the road there are marvellous signs saying "Baboons are Dangerous", and they have a picture of a baboon and a hand feeding it with such big forbidding red lines across it you would certainly know it wasn't a wise thing to have a couple of tomato sandwiches ready to hand out to something that came up to the car chattering amicably with its paw out.
I have had a terribly soft spot for baboons since my days and nights looking at them up in Mala Mala my Big Game phase as I like to think of it now. We were told the saddest thing about them.
Apparently they hate the dark and their poor hearts pound with fear all night. So they climb a tree and sit there worrying, not knowing they are as safe as a house. And suddenly, in the middle of the night, the thought comes to them that this may not be a safe tree maybe the next one might be safer and they come down and are eaten by a passing lion.
I couldn't stop thinking about the unfairness of this and so when I saw them hundreds and hundreds of miles away down south in the Cape of Good Hope, my heart went out to them and I yearned to buy them a nice lunch out of sympathy with all their demented brothers up in the Kruger National Park.
But since there were no lions down here to eat them, it was put to me that they were having a fine time altogether and they only came up and knocked on the car window out of sociability that those big imploring eyes and the way they point to the baby baboons attached to their tummies don't mean anything.
Wave at them, wish them well tell them, from inside the car, that you'll be back to see them next year.