I arrived at Ashanti in the afternoon on Sunday 2nd March in the pouring rain. This meant I was restricted to the hostel as I didn't particularly fancy getting soaked. It gave me a chance to look around and explore my home for the next ten days.
Ashanti is situated in the Gardens area of Cape Town right next to Table Mountain. It was recommended to me by a few people and has a good location being close to Kloof Street, Long Street, Company's Gardens and a 20 minute walk into the heart of town and 30 minutes to the V&A Waterfront. The property is a beautiful Victorian building with high ceilings and a wide, sweeping staircase.
It was slightly more expensive then some of the others I have stayed at but immediately it is clear why. The whole hostel is clean with good facilities and the bedrooms were, on the hostels scale, incredible. Each bunk had two lockers which could fit luggage in easily and if you wanted a more secure place for valuables there were personal digital safes available in each room.
The rooms were light, airy and clean with a sink in each one which was extremely handy. The beds were amazingly comfortable; no ridiculously thin mattresses and pillows here. Ashanti had a bar and deck which overlooked the mountain and was open all day and evening for drinks or food. Furthermore, there was a swimming pool which was a good social area or a balcony at the front of the hostel which was a bit quieter.
The view of the mountain from the hostel, with a 'tablecloth' cloud formation, which was not taken the day I arrived as the weather was atrocious.
It was here that I had a rather surreal experience with a woman in the bathroom asking me through the cubicle door how to spell labour. After finally getting her to understand it was a b rather than a p in the middle of the word and checking if she was ok I scarpered. I'm not entirely sure if she was going to have a baby but it was pretty bizzare.
The second exhibition was Traces of Ecstacy and explored 'blackness, maleness and sexuality'. The photographs were interesting but it did not capture me like the first collection. The last exhibition was a mish mash of art works under the theme of 'in our time' and so was comprised of almost anything. I preferred some of the abstract and geometrical pieces in this gallery but again was not overly enamoured with some of it. The one extremely strange feature was a 13 minute length video of a nearly naked man, dressed as a chandelier in vertiginous heels visiting one of the homeless communities in Johannesburg proclaiming to 'shed light on what is seldom seen, by creating amid destruction'. Very odd.
Following the slightly odd start to my morning I made it to Government Avenue leading to Company's Gardens. It is a lovely, leafy pedestrianised walkway on which some of the museums and the National Gallery are situated.
The National Gallery with Devil's Peak and Table Mountain in the background.
I've never been hugely into art but considering I didn't have anything else to do and time on my hands I decided that the National Gallery would be worth a browse. There were three exhibitions on throughout the gallery and I meandered my way through them enjoying some pieces and questioning others.
My favourite of the three exhibits was the first, A Nomad's Harvest, which was a collection of black and white photographs of people from the last few decades across many different continents.
The second exhibition was Traces of Ecstacy and explored 'blackness, maleness and sexuality'. The photographs were interesting but it did not capture me like the first collection. The last exhibition was a mish mash of art works under the theme of 'in our time' and so was comprised of almost anything. I preferred some of the abstract and geometrical pieces in this gallery but again was not overly enamoured with some of it. The one extremely strange feature was a 13 minute length video of a nearly naked man, dressed as a chandelier in vertiginous heels visiting one of the homeless communities in Johannesburg proclaiming to 'shed light on what is seldom seen, by creating amid destruction'. Very odd.
A pixilated photo I found online from the video.
After mooching around the National Gallery I continued down Government Avenue to the Company's Gardens, the library and finally coming to St. George's Cathedral. It was actually quite small but was still pretty, set back a little from the road and shaded by the trees. There were some quaint older buildings opposite too rather than large city blocks.
My walk next took me to Greenmarket Square which was extremely pretty and there was a tourist market selling many gifts and curios. In times past it was a popular area for farmers to come and sell their goods and more recently it was the site of anti-apartheid protests in 1989. Famously protesters turned the purple-laced water cannons onto Police dyeing the surrounding area and after the event the slogan "the purple shall govern" was daubed across the city.
I returned from my wanderings via Long Street which is packed with quirky shops, vintage stores, cafés and bars. Thankfully I managed to control my urge to buy everything in sight, a challenge every time I visited this particular street. I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening chilling by the pool and in the bar with Matt who I met in Durban and a couple of other people from Ashanti. Unfortunately Eloy could not join us due to an expired visa! However, it was a lovely start to my time in Cape Town waiting for Lou to come and join me.
Until next time.
A x
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