The Most Beautiful Place...

(This is one of a series of articles I wrote dealing with memories of an African childhood. To read the first of these, click here)

For ten years I lived in one of the most beautiful spots on earth. There are plenty of places around the globe that could say, with some justification, that they should have the title of the most beautiful. The island of Bora Bora in the Pacific Ocean is often credited in this way and I would add the South Island of New Zealand and the strange landscapes of Iceland as contenders. My son, Mad, would want the Perhentian Islands of Malaysia to be considered and I have no doubt that many other places would be suggested by my readers.

It has to be a subjective judgement, of course. I can see a strange beauty in the flatness and emptiness of Australia's Nullarbor Plain, yet to some this would appear as a good example of the worst in landscapes. So much depends upon our personal taste and expectations.

Yet I can still say confidently that once I lived in a place that has some claim to be the best. Have a look at this photograph:



That long, flat mountain on the horizon is Table Mountain and at its base, clustering around an enormous bay, is Cape Town. The mountain and the city stand at the base of a peninsula near the southern tip of Africa, a peninsula that separates the warm Indian Ocean from the cold Atlantic. In the valleys surrounding the mountain there are vineyards hundreds of years old, first planted by Huguenot refugees from religious wars in France. Imposing Dutch farmhouses with white gables nestle into those same valleys and forests climb the slopes of the mountain that dominates the scenery. The city itself spreads around the bay, then crosses a ridge to form a string of suburbs along the eastern side of the mountain. It has to be a contender for the title of City in the Most Glorious Setting in the World.

I lived there for ten years. The irony is that I was completely unaware of the favored nature of my home at the time. I was just too young to appreciate the landscapes and sights that surrounded me. Ten year old boys are not overawed by towering mountains and sweeping valleys, historic buildings and great cities; their interests lie elsewhere.

Cape Town to me was merely home. My memories of it are those of boyhood scrapes and pleasures, pushing horse droppings through letterboxes in our street, baking potatoes in illicit fires in the empty lot, helping our Staffordshire Bull Terrier in her attempts to dig out moles in the open fields, riding the surf on belly boards at Muizenberg Beach. We lived in the place and never indulged in the standard tourist pleasures, such as riding the cable car to the summit of the mountain.

In only one aspect did the mountain manage to push its way into my consciousness. Just occasionally my father would take me in the car to Kirstenbosch Gardens and we would set out to "climb the mountain". To this day I have no idea whether my father knew that this was an impossible task in the time we had available. But to me, it was always there to be achieved and every time we set out with this goal in mind, I had clear expectations that we would stroll up there, wander around a bit and be back home in time for dinner. It was only in later years that it struck me that we never even came to the end of the forests that line the base of the mountain.

Yet now it is those forests that enable me to nod in agreement whenever anyone claims Cape Town as the most beautiful city on earth. The memory of those walks is sharper than the surf on the beaches and the ice creams from the shop that was shaped itself like an ice cream cone.

Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens are set on the slopes leading up to the mountain, an area of peace and beauty amongst plants brought from all over the world, an extensive garden of delights. But at its upper edge lay the forest and the gardens were ignored as we walked on to that lush experience. In the forest the air was always cool, the light sprinkled in patterns through the bright green foliage above. There was little undergrowth, the hard bones of the slopes being covered in a matting of fallen leaves and pine needles. Down from the mountain rushed little streams of cold, clear water that was sharp and biting to the taste, and the silence of the forest became an encompassing environment enhanced but not broken by the sounds of tumbling water.

I have no memory of seasons in that world; it seems to me now that there were always mushrooms to pick. And these were mushrooms that spoiled me for the sad little store-bought varieties forever. To come home with a bag of the edible varieties and then savor their freshly-fried taste is a memory seared into my mind. After that, any mushroom is an insipid and vague reminder of the real thing.

At some point in our stroll through the forest, always upwards but never steep enough to be called climbing, my father would announce that we had run out of time, that our achievement of the summit must await some other time. I recall that I was disappointed at those moments, that my innocence expected that just half an hour more would see us complete the ascent. Yet that disappointment was never too great; perhaps even then I had some understanding that the journey had become what mattered and arrival was a dream that would only be marred by transformation into reality.

It seems strange to me now that I could live in such a place and not notice the things for which it is famous. I never saw the mountain from across the bay, the spot from which the photograph above is taken; I never gazed out over the city and its surroundings from the eyrie of Table Mountain; I did not record the cold and damp of the harsh south-easterly winds of the winter - in my mind it was always summer.

Yet still it remains to me a magical place, a city that deserves to be numbered amongst those most beautiful. The photograph I have included is but one illustration of Cape Town's magnificence; for more you could have a look at this site. And, for those few who love maps, I include this.

(to read the next of the African Memories articles, click here)