Cape Town - Cape Town is a city alive with activities, whether they’re the traditional tourist attractions – which I firmly believe all locals should participate in wherever possible – or regular events like First Thursdays, and now the City Walk which takes place on the third Saturday of every month.
Exploring on foot is one of the best ways to get to know any city, and it can be done any time, guided formally or self-guided with maps, sign boards, or the smartphone app VoiceMap. If you’re looking for something a little more structured, put on your comfy shoes next Saturday and join in the fun.
You can pick up the route anywhere you like, but ideally you should begin at the top – the Mount Nelson end – of the Company’s Garden. From there, it goes down Government Avenue, into St George’s Mall, and all the way down to Waterkant Street – or the Bart Simpson sculpture, which is a landmark everyone knows – to the beginning of the fan walk and St Andrew’s Square.
Along the way you can expect all sorts of performances, art and music installations, dancing, drinking, eating, face painting, games and more, many of which involve public participation. Each walk will have a theme; the inaugural one last month was “Play”, which will be repeated next week and includes some of the most popular portions from before.
Like #100AfricanReads, in which young performers each had a book by an African author, wore clothing reflecting the nationality of the author, and carried parasols which made for many lovely, striking photographs. This is worth noting because the Instagram community is encouraged to share their images with the world during an adjacent “Instawalk”.
Another segment that went down well were the big games. The Company’s Garden restaurant was our starting and finishing point, and on the grass opposite it, challengers of all ages can participate in a game of giant chess. In the avenue there was a type of Scrabble game with word tiles, which hurt my heart even though the children playing it and making up gibberish words were having fun so no judgement there. Alongside that was chalk art on the ground, and a silver statue man.
I was pleased to know there was an outdoor library, which meant I could donate some books to balance my karma of taking one from the garden wall in Albertyn Road, Muizenberg, a while back. Speaking of books, later on in St George’s Mall, two colourfully dressed women were posing for a photograph. One of them grabbed me and forced me into an unintentional photo bomb, after which she pressed a tiny Little Book of Happiness into my hands. I discovered afterwards she is Colleen Brand, who was giving away copies of her concertina book, about the size of a matchbox.
There was quite a bit of free stuff, actually, including face painting which Diva and I had to have done. It got us some strange looks later in the evening, but who cares?
Also in St George’s Mall were fire dancers, a music project called Hear Be Dragons, a community-based education and creative arts programme that brings young people together to explore the world of sound within their communities and maps the sonic landscape of their lives, and an actual film shoot. Although we pondered whether this was another installation it was the real deal, and the director was tearing his hair out because of all the other stuff going on,.
We didn’t get much further than that because, well, wine. We took a pavement table at Doppio Zero – which was handing out free croissants, but that wasn’t the reason – and watched the festive things going on around us. When it was all over we meandered back up to the Company’s Garden to feed the squirrels.
The next walk is scheduled for June 20 from 10am to 2pm. There will be three main nodes of activity – the Company’s Garden, the top of St George’s Mall, and St Andrews Square – where activity maps will be available.
l For more information, follow the Cape Town Partnership on Twitter @ctpartnership and use #walkcapetown. Follow on Facebook – Cape Town Partnership, on Instagram as @CapeTownSoul, visit www.capetownpartnership.co.za or call 021 419 1881.
Weekend Argus