Cavorting in Cape Town

CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- Above the hip-pulsing Latin rhythms mixed with a side of dance music in the Cubana Lounge
-- a trendy bar in the fashionable de Waterkant neighborhood of Cape
Town -- James K., a thirty-something interior designer who's become my
guide for the evening, shouts to make himself heard as the barman
performs tricks involving fire and alcohol.

"Listen to this music," he says, emphatically pointing toward
the ceiling as if trying to explain a time and place, "this is not
Africa." When we return to his friends, balancing fistfuls of mojitos,
he makes the point again. "Look at these people," motioning at his own
entourage and then at the rest of the crowd, which would not look out
of place in SoHo or SoBe. "This is not Africa either. This is South Africa."

It's an astute observation. Cape Town is not what people think of
when they think of Africa. But neither is it the final post-apartheid
outpost of European colonialism or the Ibiza of the Southern
Hemisphere, as others claim.

It is a Cape of contrasts, for sure, and no other city better
exemplifies the eclectic, electric mix of people and cultures that
symbolize the polyglot nickname South Africa has pinned upon itself
since the rise of democracy: "a rainbow nation."

Rich History

Often referred to as the Mother City, Cape Town is the oldest established settlement in South Africa.

Founded in 1652 as a stopping point for Dutch East India Company
trading ships, it occupies a setting of extraordinary beauty near the
southernmost horn of Africa, straddling the Atlantic and Indian Oceans,
which meet near the Cape of Good Hope.