"June Bug," our rented Toyota Spark, took us everywhere we wanted to go. We started out in Constantia - one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Cape Town, South Africa - and drove out of the city into the wilderness of Stellenbosch wine country. Taking the N2 road, which stretched to the west of Cape Town, we saw Cape Town's apparent "first world development" deteriorate into settlement townships. These townships, which are urban shanty towns created during the Apartheid era for non-whites, are now destinations for tourists to witness South Africa's great poverty and racial inequality. But even though we were momentarily aware of the real South Africa, we easily forgot it as we arrived in Speir.
Excitedly, we parked June Bug and ventured into Speir. We were officially tourists. We saw cheetahs, tasted five kinds of wine, had our faces painted in white dots, held baby owls - which happened to pee on us - and took thousands of typical tourist photos.
We left Speir and drove back to Constantia. June Bug did well, considering he was a stick shift and could barely maneuver himself up a mountain. The following day, we tested him even more by driving out to Cape Point - a location near the Cape of Good Hope, the most southwestern point of Africa where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic Ocean. We drove over the cliffs and white beaches of Noordhoek, Kommetjie and Scarborough, a scenic route comparable to California's Route 1, except that the ocean is bluer, and the mountains are higher - and it's in Africa. At Cape Point we climbed the large, hillish mountain and stood at the edge, nearly 400 meters above the sea, waves crashing below. The scenery reminded me of what the original explorers saw when they arrived. Now, I was an explorer as well.
Actually, I was just a girl in gladiator sandals with an extremely large purse full of my essentials - a camera, ChapStick, sunblock and a credit card. Hence the paradox of tourism and Cape Town. Cape Town is in Africa - and yet it is Europeanized. There are cheetahs but they are in cages. There is vast beauty and wilderness but they are urbanized, too. There is wealth but it is right next to poverty. I was feeling confused by the dualistic nature of our visit. It seemed as though we were contributing to a certain type of unnameable exploitation. But if we did not visit and help boost the economy by tourism, would not the country suffer more?
We left Cape Point, and I continued to stare at the surroundings as June Bug slowly crept out of the national reserve - which encompassed Cape Point - and back into Muizenberg, a small beach town outlying Cape Town, where we stopped for Mojitos. We continued the night onward, and I put my slight uneasiness at bay by drinking and dancing and enjoying the comfortable side of Cape Town. The trip continued on in this way: me feeling slightly uneasy about exploitation and poverty but reassuring myself that the money I was spending as a tourist was helping the economy. And so June Bug drove us down to Hermanus, an area along the southern coast known for its beauty, and out to a safari the following day at Garden Route Game Lodge, where we saw lions, elephants, zebras and giraffes. June Bug drove us to Victoria Wharf and to the Nelson Mandela Gateway to Robben Island, from which we took a ferry to that location. June Bug drove us everywhere our tourist-student hearts desired to go.
After nearly six days of driving June Bug, we realized we had refueled him only three times. We had driven vast amounts, at least 1,000 kilometers - but he had taken only about two tanks of gas, at most. His gas gauge must have been broken, right? We were nervous that we would run out of fuel; however, when we went to fill him up, he only took four liters. How could this be?
African Magic was the answer, or so said my friend's mother, with whom we were staying. Do not question it; just let it be. And so African Magic became the answer to my previous uneasiness. The paradoxes, the dualistic nature of Cape Town's European style inside of Africa's poverty. It was African Magic that forced everything into harmony; it was African Magic that came from the paradox. Apartheid's shadow was so obvious from the settlement townships, and yet it was also a thing of the past and any modern-day consequences of such must be overcome. The exploitation amid the natural beauty seemed to come together to form African Magic - which was essentially that things were different here. The way of life was different. Things had to be taken as they were and slowly pushed toward betterment instead of being forced. Thus, I came to realize that South Africa is about relaxing into the state of things while striving to become better. South Africa is a paradox: It's magic.
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