Ten Traveller's Tales: Travel stories from British Columbia, Cape Town, and the Baltic Countries

By Julian Worker

Go on a quick visit to three different continents. Visit Vancouver and its surrounding areas – go hiking in rain forest twenty minutes from the downtown core, catch the ferry to the Sunshine Coast – you can’t get there by road - and tour Victoria the capital of British Columbia. Next travel to Cape Town with its colourful history, encapsulated in the ethnically diverse Bo Kaap district. In this part of Cape Town the coloured houses are even more breathtaking than the views of Table Mountain. Read about the conversations you could have in the market in Cape Town’s Greenmarket Square. Finally, journey to the independent countries of the Baltic and discover the splendid churches of the capitals Tallinn and Riga where the architecture is breathtaking and the number of tourists is still relatively few.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AUK Authors
• Release date: Sep 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781782342182

Julian Worker

“Little Known British Traditions” is my first book of humourous stories. One of my stories, Safari Sickness, has been recently published in an anthology called “Leave the Lipstick, Take the Iguana” by Travelers’ Tales. Other articles have recently appeared in the Expeditioner online e-zine, and in Americas the magazine of the Organization of American States. My travel stories have appeared in The Toronto Globe and Mail, The National Catholic Register, International Travel News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Southern Cross newspaper in South Africa. On the Internet my writing has appeared on the following websites: In the Know Traveller, Go World, Paperplates, Intravel, and GoNomad. I have also taken many photographs that have appeared in travel guides/articles by National Geographic, Thomas Cook, The Rough Guides, and The Guardian.

Book preview

1988.

Cape Town - The Bo Kaap

No matter how many times I gazed at Table Mountain, rested on the Atlantic beaches, or savoured the food at one of the many restaurants at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, I could never really escape the history of Cape Town. Robben Island, the Slave Lodge on Wale Street, and the Bo Kaap district all lead you back to a dark past, a past that adds a certain zest to any visit here. There’s a reason for everything here and this intriguing past makes Cape Town a must-visit city.

Book well in advance for your trip to Robben Island especially in the summer holidays when there can be a wait of two weeks before there’s a free spot. Try and get to the Nelson Mandela Gateway at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront early to board the boat as the best seats are on the top deck with the views of Table Mountain especially eye-catching.

Once on the island everyone has to get on a bus and be escorted around the island before visiting the prison. The most poignant place is the house of Robert Sobukwe the founder of the Pan Africanist Congress. Sobukwe was in solitary confinement and wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone - however he did give secret hand signals to other prisoners when he was outside - he held dirt in his hand and let it trickle through his fingers as a gesture of solidarity. His little yellow house is by the guard-dog kennels. Visitors also see the quarry where the prisoners worked.

Ex-prisoners or ex-wardens conduct the prison tours - they show you Nelson Mandela’s cell, the exercise yard, and the dormitory style accommodation with the daily prison diet written on a board for all to see.

Back in Cape Town, the most poignant symbol of the apartheid regime is the District 6 museum. District 6 was a vibrant community of Cape Malays, Indians, Blacks, and a few Whites until 11th February 1966, when the apartheid regime declared District Six a whites-only area under the Group Areas Act. By 1982 60,000 people had been relocated to the Cape Flats Township around 15 miles away. Only the churches and mosques remained standing.

A pair of pictures of one street before and after the demolition of the area made me so sad as the destruction is absolute. There’s a tower of street names from the district which were given to the museum by the person whose job it was to collect the signs and throw them into the sea. District 6 was to be erased from the memory. A whites only bench leaves you in no doubt as to who is allowed to sit on it. On the floor is a map of