When I travel, I like to see all parts of a city, including the non-tourist areas.\u00a0 So there was no question that my visit to Cape Town<\/b> would include a visit to the townships.\u00a0 I decided to visit Langa Township<\/b> with Vuvu’s Small Shack Day Tours<\/a><\/strong>. My tour guide was Vuvu, a friendly and enterprising young lady who is also a Langa resident. \u00a0It was more like a visit with an old friend who was showing me around the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

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We visited the Guga S’Thebe Arts and Cultural Centre<\/b>, where we saw paintings, pottery, and other art work hand made by local residents.\u00a0 A highlight was when student musicians taught me to play the drum, then invited me to join them in a short jam session.\u00a0 I had a blast!\u00a0 We also visited the Langa Dompas Museum, a medicine healer, the food market, various neighborhoods, and Vuvu’s \u00a0shack (yes, it’s small).<\/p>\n

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We ended our day with lunch at Mzoli’s<\/b>, a popular hangout in the nearby township of Gugulethu<\/b>.\u00a0 Not quite a restaurant, Mzoli’s is best described as a butcher\/braai\/outdoor dance club.\u00a0 You choose from a wide variety of raw meat, then have it weighed and seasoned.\u00a0 After you pay, you take your tray of meat to the back to be braaied (barbecued to us North Americans).\u00a0 If you want drinks, you buy from the store next door or bring them with you.\u00a0 Then you go to the covered patio to wait for your food.\u00a0 While waiting, the resident DJ plays a variety of house and local music.\u00a0 The friendly crowd dances and sings along.\u00a0 We waited a long time for our food (about an hour), as I had been warned to expect on the weekend.\u00a0 But it was worth the wait — the food was delicious.<\/p>\n

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All in all, I had an enjoyable day.\u00a0 I learned a lot about South African history and culture, and met some great people with whom I remain in contact.\u00a0 That’s the best part of global travel –\u00a0 meeting people and enjoying experiences you never would have in your small corner of the world.<\/p>\nShare This <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I travel, I like to see all parts of a city, including the non-tourist areas.\u00a0 So there was no question that my visit to Cape Town would include a visit to the townships.\u00a0 I decided to visit Langa Township with Vuvu’s Small Shack Day Tours. My tour guide was Vuvu, a friendly and enterprising … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[119,19,115,120,116,113,117,118,15,114],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-thetravelsista","4":"post-185","6":"format-standard","7":"category-africa","8":"post_tag-braai","9":"post_tag-cape-town","10":"post_tag-guga-sthebe-arts-and-cultural-centre","11":"post_tag-gugulethu","12":"post_tag-langa-dompas-museum","13":"post_tag-langa-township","14":"post_tag-medicine-healer","15":"post_tag-mzolis","16":"post_tag-south-africa","17":"post_tag-vuvus-small-shack-tours"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetravelsista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetravelsista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetravelsista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetravelsista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetravelsista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/thetravelsista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":203,"href":"http:\/\/thetravelsista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions\/203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetravelsista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetravelsista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetravelsista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}