It’s been just over 24 hours since landing at Cape Town International Airport and this is a good a time as any to make the first blog entry. The flight from London, England was just over 12 hours long and it certainly felt it. Although I enjoy flying, it was nice to finally land get out of plane. Impressively, immigration and customs was a breeze to get through and the lines went quite fast. I don’t think it took any longer than 30 minutes from the point of disembarking from the airplane to the time we picked up our bags and looked for a taxi to get us to the hotel.

I have always found prices to be cheaper after arriving at an area than pre-booking them online, whenever travelling internationally. That was the same case here. A prebooked shuttle from the hotel would have cost R450, which equates to around $66 US. By contrast, the local taxi service at the airport called Citi Hopper, charged only R190 for the same trip. I’m sure that there may have been other cheaper options had we looked longer, but since everything is relative, the price seemed like a decent deal.

The first thing I noticed leaving the airport is that even in a world class city like Cape Town, where there is a much higher quality of life than pretty much anywhere else on the continent, there is still no mistaking that you are in Africa. There were many miles of shanty towns dotting the route from the airport and out to the waterfront where our hotel was. What was quite striking is the way makeshift electrical lines are tied into the main power grid to siphon off electricity. The danger to residents from these residences as the load can blow out circuit breakers and distribution boxes. Fires can and have burned down dozens of homes in these shanty towns from illegally tapping into the main lines. According to the United Nations Population Fund, over 1 billion people around the world live in slums. That number is expected to grow to 2 billion by 2050 as the planet’s population continues to rise and more people concentrate around urban areas hoping to find employment and opportunities for a better way of life. I hope to actually take a trip into the most famous of these shanty towns later on this month when we get to Johannesburg.

After checking into the Westin Grand hotel and having a quick bite to eat, we set off for the Victoria & Albert Waterfront where we had to catch the 3 PM boat to the infamous Robben Island — the small, flat island just five miles from the mainland that was used from the 17th century until the end of the 20th century as a way of isolating people from society. Most recently, from the 1960′s to the early 90′s, Robben Island was used to lock up political prisoners during the Apartheid era of South Africa. The most famous of these prisoners is Nelson Mandela, who was finally freed in 1990 and became South Africa’s first post-Apartheid President from 1994 to 1999.