a splash of colors: Cape Town

On the left is the picture of the largest slum in South Africa, in its tourist capital of Cape Town, and houses 200,000 migrants. It quite stands out among the harmony of green fields, blue waters and merging mountains of this beautiful city. Coming from India, these are the cleanest looking shafts I've seen.

Cape Town in many ways reminds me of Seattle, in its ability to merge natural surroundings of forests, waters, hills and mountains with city life, and the city life in itself having many facets: the hip urban hangout, the lower economy neighborhoods, the snobbish upper class neighborhoods; the city is anything but homogeneous.

That apartheid is something South Africa carried in its recent past is not lost to an outsider, even on a short visit. I was slightly surprised at how hotly debated the topic of affirmative action is today, and how well the South African split on the topic based on her/his race. Incidentally, the White South African population accounts for less than 10%, which is not evident in the corporate upper ladder. Above is a picture of my gang hanging out at a club in Cape Town: we were the only racially mixed group at the club.

This is the image of Cape Town that I left with: Happy penguins in pristine white sands unperturbed by the amount of eyeballs or camera snaps capturing them. Bring it on!