Historical City Walking Tour of Cape Town

Thank you for your review Corinna.

I recently participated in the historic walking tour through Cape Town, and while I was eager to learn more about the city’s rich history, the experience unfortunately fell short of my expectations. The tour was quite basic, offering only simple facts about the city’s history that felt too general and could have been easily discovered without a guide. I was particularly disappointed by the limited scope of the tour. For example, we did not stop by some of the key landmarks that I had anticipated seeing, such as the Castle of Good Hope (which we only saw from a distance), the Victorian and Edwardian buildings like the Old YMCA Building, the District Six Museum, the Iziko Koopmans De-Wet House (the oldest house museum in South Africa), no particular reference to Cape Town’s earliest theatre (now St Stephen’s Church) on Heritage Square. These sites are also significant to the city’s history and would have added considerable value to the tour. Additionally, I felt that the tour seemed somewhat surface-level and missed the opportunity to give a richer, more insightful perspective on the city’s past. Overall, while the tour offered some interesting historical insights, it could greatly benefit from a broader and more detailed exploration of Cape Town’s historical landmarks and a more neutral presentation of the country’s history.

Ricardo, like you say “the tour fell short of your expectations”, this is because you arrived for the tour with incorrect expectations. Your comments are unfair. Please allow me to point this out to you. -1- The tour is advertised as a 90 minute tour and not a four hour tour. -2- When we stopped on the corner of Loop street and Longmarket street, here I mentioned the fact that you will see buildings from the Dutch eras as well as the British eras. Included along the route are the French art deco and American styled buildings as well. I pointed them out all the way. The City Hall where we stopped and among other things I spoke about the statue of Nelson Mandela, is probably the most iconic Edwardian building that we saw along the route. -3- Regarding the Castle of Good Hope, maybe you were not paying attention when I did the pre tour briefing. Here I said that we have seven different walking tours on the GuruWalk platform. Each one of them focuses on a specific topic or subject, and should you wish to learn more about these other topics, you're welcome to book these tours as well. Our 90 minute Castle of Good Hope Tour is one of them, which is why we did not share more about this site during our Historical City tour. -4- The Old YMCA Building is a privately owned building which is not open to public tours. -5- The District 6 museum is not open on a Sunday (the day on which you booked this tour), and neither is it part of the route. -6- The Iziko Koopmans De-Wet House is NOT the oldest museum in South Africa, for that you will have to travel about 30 kilometres out of the city, and the Iziko Koopmans De-Wet House is closed on Sundays as well. -7- St Stephen’s Church is part of our Bo-Kaap tour, and not the Historical City tour. -8- Let me remind you Ricardo, that before and during the tour (at every stop) I did ask the group if you had any questions. You had none. -9- You have expressed your opinions which I have proved to you are not factual. So, please allow me to express my opinion. You were 1 of 4 in the group, and you volunteered information to the group that your family (people who were classified as “white” under apartheid) chose to leave South Africa at the same time when Nelson Mandela became the first democratically elected state president of South Africa. Before I answered the question of a group member where she asked why so many white South Africans chose to leave South Africa at that time, I did say to you Ricardo, that my response does not necessarily mean that this was the case with your family. I went on to say that most of the white people who left at that time did so on the basis that they could not or would not accept the change from their position of privilege during the apartheid era, to the new democratic era in South Africa. You are not the first white South African born guest on one of my tours who felt uneasy after receiving factual information, which were largely kept away from us during apartheid. -10- Our tour times are advertised fairly on the GuruWalk platform, please do not expect extended tours from guides without understanding what you have booked, especially since you did not ask any questions along the way. -11- Should you wish to enjoy an extended walking tour, you are more than welcome to book these as a private tour, by referring to our website.