STAY AT THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE

Ever since Bartolomeu Diaz became the first European to discover the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, while searching for a sea route to Asia, truths, stories, tragedies and legends have surrounded this geographically and cartographically significant point. Diaz was caught in a storm and named it the ‘Cape of Storms’. ‘Southernmost point of Africa’ and ‘meeting point of the two oceans’ are other names – and to this day the most common, if inaccurate, attributes given to the Cape of Good Hope and neighbouring Cape Point. Both are in fact true of Cape Agulhas, 140 kilometres to the south-east, yet few people take much interest in it, because even the first seafarers described the Cape of Good Hope as the turning point. Once they had rounded this rocky, often fog-shrouded and storm-lashed cape, they had made it.