Today will be a month since we left South Africa to start a new life together, in Toronto, Canada. Twelve years have passed - to the day - in which I have lived in the excruciatingly beautiful country, apparently one of Africa’s richest and most promising nations.

It was also the 16th of December back in 2006 that I arrived in the Cape Town, following a two-month sabbatical in South America*. I had flown on a one-way Air Malaysia flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina, having backpacked through four countries (Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina). Ostensibly ‘back home’ - as I was born in the Mother City (one of Cape Town’s nicknames) - to see my family and then to fly off to continue my travels.

Then, I fell in love with the city.

It’s not difficult to imagine. Cape Town is undeniably attractive and can easily seduce visitors with her plentiful vineyards, extraordinary beaches and vistas that take your breathe away. The city is regularly at the top of ‘best destinations to visit in the world’. In fact, it is one of the most revisited destinations in the world with travellers returning regularly, some entranced enough to stay.

South Africa is a country of contrasts and these are glaringly apparent in Cape Town: wealth and poverty, kindness and cruelty, beauty and wretched depravity. But if one has the means to choose where you visit, the city offers unprecedented accessibility to a range of experiences, from camping in dusty deserts to walking barefoot in lush gardens. Within half an hour one can go from shaking the white-gloved hand of a hotel doorman to saying “cheers” to locals at bring-your-own-meat-and-drinks to shanty town braai (barbeque).

Smiles aplenty & hospitable locals

It also helps a great deal if you get to know some locals. Fortunately for me, I did meet some wonderful Capetonians, who welcomed me into the city and the way of life that one can enjoy in and around the city.

Failing this, a good resource for finding out what’s what in the Mother City is CapeTownMagazine, a local website that has about a 50/50 split between locals and foreigners (Dutch/Germans, mainly) among its audience.

Some years later, I also fell in love with an extraordinary woman, who eventually became my wife, another reason I dearly love Cape Town.

* I had produced a blog of this experience, but the platform I used went out of business and in doing so, all my photos and posts were lost.