We park centrally and after exiting the covered garage are a bit surprised by how empty the streets are. It is Sunday of course but still it feels like a US downtown and not any African or European downtown we have seen. There are however lots of interesting buildings to gawk at as we walk toward the center of the tourist area the Comp,any Gardens.
The Company that is alluded in the Company Gardens name is of course the Dutch East India Company which basically owned Cape Town for hundreds of years and first started the garden in 1652. The garden was used for the resupplying of their ships that plied the spice trade route between Europe and the East Indies via The Cape of Good Hope. As we get to the southern edge of the Gardens area there are already a few historical buildings, the Slave Lodge and the St George Cathedral. The Slave Lodge is where they housed around 9,000 slaves across a century and a half until slavery was outlawed in the 19th century. The building afterwards served as government offices for another century and now it is a museum dedicated to slavery.
We do not visit it today but we visit the exhibit below St George Cathedral about apartheid. St. George Cathedral was a focal point of the battle against apartheid with the first black archbishop of Cape Town Desmond Tutu being one of the leaders of anti-apartheid for which he received the Nobel Prize for Peace.
The next stop on our tour is the South African Parliament, the government offices are split across 3 cities with the parliament being located in Cape Town. You cannot enter the Parliament but it is really impressive from outside, a grand old building.
However soon we are inside the Gardens and we are surprised by the number of squirrels inside the park, unfortunately invasive, as well as some whimsical details like the faucet in the tree.
We admire the beautiful flower arrangements throughout the Gardens, it seems a lot of effort was put in to create and maintain them.
There are also quite a few statues including one of Rhodes an important person in South African history and also the founder of De Beers. And to put it mildly a controversial figure now.
There are also birds everywhere including at a small aviary in the middle of the Gardens. We enjoy watching the ibises and ubiquitous geese, they are everywhere it seems.
Interestingly it seems that a white zebra finch escaped the small aviary and now is frantically trying to get back in to food and safety, with no luck it seems.
Close to the other end of the Company Gardens there are multiple museums including the National Museum and the National Gallery but most of them are closed. Given that it doesn’t rain anymore it doesn’t really matter as we wanted to visit as much as we could on foot anyway during our only full day in Cape Town.
One of the most common birds in the park to our surprise is the Egyptian Goose. We see multiple ones on the roofs and in the trees and even a few with a multitude of cute little chicks.
And then it is time to leave the Gardens as we continue on towards the Castle of Good Hope which is relatively nearby.
