We humans are really so endearing! When things start to become a little bit boring socially and at work, the child that still lingers inside every one of us, will start complaining. Urging us to remember times when our feet responded to sea sand, bodies that lunged with anticipation into white foaming waves and the perfect calm that spreads over the satisfied soul when one relaxes at day’s end.

Being an amateur voyeur of the human soul, I will now humbly predict what the effect of 2010 will be on German, British, Italian, French, Dutch, Scandinavian psyches and all the many more that are not directly mentioned!

To have been in France and then Germany during the Soccer World Cup of 2006 explained how the human spirit could become completely different to the grayish lifestyle that preceded it.

Dinner at a sidewalk café in Paris with the television showing the French soccer team steadily demolishing an opponent, invoked roars from completely respectable diners from all surrounding tables. Midnight in Paris, hanging out of a window to watch how that whole population somehow decided to go down one street of Paris, waving their flags from a fleet of cars, motorbikes and even bicycles. From the sidewalks the poor souls without vehicles and tooters cheered as loudly as the other bunch.

Typically quite different the German response as experienced in Berlin. They gathered in hordes in beer gardens and they roared and moaned as loudly as their more emotional counterparts, but the downing of huge mugs of beer went with a nod of respect to the super ego as Sigmund Freud would have gathered. He would probably also analyzed the French and the Italians to have a slight inclination towards the Id with it’s very direct emotional response. The Dutch would most likely take side with the Germans!

The 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa will be a completely different cup of tea. The beauty of the African continent will draw visitors wildly to a vast variety of attractions. Soccer will be the primary drawing card but then the spirit of adventure will be teased out of folk focused on soccer.

In Cape Town visitors will have to visit the meditating Table Mountain. The revolving cable cars will carry tourists and fans up the mountain where they will suddenly become aware of something different to their expectations. It is not only a mountain, it is the definitive mountain that inspired visionaries like Jan Smuts to come contemplating the greater scheme of things. Table Mountain takes your breath away, time and time again. Below is the Atlantic Ocean stretching away in blue forever with the city buzzing quietly in the foreground.

And with only a brushstroke of ocean in between, lies Robben Island. There are other islands that have embedded histories of great people that lived there or were jailed there, but few if any evoke such deep emotions as the island that was the jail of Nelson Mandela and his compatriots. For more than two decades this principled and charismatic leader was kept away from his suffering people. Even behind bars he drew the respect of his jailers and after sanity returned to the country, this great man was set free to become the first black president of South Africa. One cannot visit Cape Town without boarding a boat at the Waterfront to visit Robben Island. Not to forget about the other leaders that were kept there. There is one mesmerizing story about Robert Sobukwe who was kept apart from other prisoners because of his revolutionary speeches. He lived in a small house on the island in total isolation, and when the prisoners were taken to chip away their days on the white rock of the island, they had to pass his house. Robert Sobukwe was not allowed any communication with the other prisoners but once he was in his little garden when they passed his house. All he did was to crouch onto his one knee and take up some soil from his garden which he slowly allowed to fall from his hand to the ground again. Communication without words, but effective to the bone.

In 2010 the lovers of soccer will rush to the Green Point Soccer Stadium, but many will take time to pay homage to the silent prisoners that were kept on Robben Island.

Talking of Green Point, that borders the Cape Town Waterfront, one will find how the Capetonian lifestyle will just start to draw one in with it’s very attractive laid back manner. The beaches of Clifton, Camps Bay with the pure white sand and sun glazed water attract both the young crowd and the leathery skinned old timers. In summer the temperature of the water is so that once used to it’s initial coldness, one experiences a deep sense of joyful homecoming. In winter, you will die of the intense cold that will hit your body on entry, and rebirth will only be sometime after you have warmed up from the inside at the Kalk Bay Station restaurant on the other side of the mountain. Right in front will be the Indian Ocean and False Bay with the dazzling Helderberg Mountains on the other side. And as always, Table Mountain will be at your back, offering a Nature Reserve experience and a breathtaking view on the fusion of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean at Cape Point.

And then there will be Hout Bay where one can board a boat to go watching a seal colony with lurking white sharks not far away. And those sharks are really huge as we endeavour to feed them to a size that inspires awe with visiting soccer fans...

When visitors tire of the sidewalk café extended visits, the shopping malls etc. one can also vote for a game of golf at one of the many great golf courses. Or spend a whole day visiting the various wine routes. A visit to the immense Kirstenbosh will leave you spellbound by the abundance of flora. And then you can also go visiting Hermanus, not only for the calm beauty of that, but also to watch the visiting whales in that deep waters. And somehow a visit to the quiantness that are Stellenbosch, Paarl and the not to be missed Franschoek all have to be fit in. and we haven’t even mentioned the day trip up the West Coast with it’s completely different culture to the Cape Town way of life. The abundance of flowers in season on the Namaqua Land offers more variety. You will be robbed of an experience if time cannot be found to go beyond the Du Toitskloof Tunnel to see how the lushness of the Boland area gradually changes into the Great Karoo, rich for its fossil history and the vastness of never ending open spaces. What about the Spa’s you will ask? What about the hot water springs and the fishing trips, I will answer?

All true tourists have experienced that sense of starting to appreciate the essence of a place but that one has to move on before really getting a grip on the whole experience. That is why one returns to enchanted places after the initial meeting.

Visiting Cape Town for a short while, will leave you longing for its magic again. Every additional visit will leave you with a sense of so much more that you only had a glimpse of. A Capetonian visit becomes a recurring lifestyle. Take time to know it.

Wim van der Walt
24 October 2007