While the shops and bars on Cape Town's most notorious street swap out from year to year, the facades and the foundations are somehow still with us after a century and change!
So, following closely Desmond Martin's remarkable guide 'Walking Long Street', I propose you join my curious posse this Saturday afternoon from 14h00 to 16h30 to finally, belatedly get around to appreciating one of the greatest continuous city-length heritage sites in the entire Global South.
That's not an overstatement! Unlike it's poor sisters Adderley and Buitenkant, Long Street still requires only a bystander's imagination to effect a triptastic time-travel experience as you angle your eyes to enjoy the ornate gables, impasto colours and imperial detritus from the strangest decades of an evaporating century.
From colonial embassy lodges, to semi-ancient mosques, to the loveable Turkish Dive-Baths, to pioneering concept hotels, scattered indie coffee roasters, septuagenarian Africana bookshops and the oldest elevator in South Africa, the fabric and texture of the Mother City in the Modern Day is nowhere else more self-evident nor more gorgeously ageing than along the looped strip of CBD mansions between Orange and Strand.
So feel free to jump aboard the strolling rundown at any point, just so long as you bring water, cameras, questions, patience, a tightened bladder, friends, interest in the city you find yourself in, and added tips! (If you're so inclined.)
RSVP and much love just for reading this far!
Yours,Cameron the Permanent Tourist x
“Cameron’s tours are informative and filled with quirky anecdotes. I felt like I saw the real Cape Town during the Long Street walk about. I loved the tiny, hidden details and their historic stories. Highly recommended.”- Colleen M.
P.S. If you've read this far I'm guessing you'll want even more of the specs, so here goes:- We'll be starting by Molten Toffee Cafe near the intersection of Long, Orange and Kloof Streets at 14h00 then finishing by the entrance to the Sendinggestig 'Slave Church' Museum just near the bottom two-and-a-half hours later, so happily park on Bree or Loop Street, do a two-car system or (lord forbid) take the MyCiTi bus the whole day.- We've just put up our ticket prices for the first time in two-and-a-half years, from R120pp to R150pp. Obviously this is just to keep with inflation and to allow the tours to remain a sustainable enterprise for the foreseeable future, but this is still about R50 less per person than our nearest competition. In other words, we are deliberately undercharging the tours so as to keep them affordable for locals and visitors alike and to encourage guests to come back weekend after weekend.- Book via Quicket, WhatsApp us on 076 033 8164, E-mail us on cameronlukepeters812@gmail.com or Message us via the buttons on our home page to secure your place.- We have also just introduced a broad scheme of discounts you can apply for on each tour, so please do consult the list below before contacting us!- And we've decided to partner with a different local NGO or charity for each and every one of our tour routes so that R10 of every ticket purchased goes directly to a good, sustainable, local cause. For the Long Street tour, we've chosen to fund-raise for U-Turn Homeless Ministries, and you can inspect their brilliance here:https://homeless.org.za- This is a consistently well-reviewed heritage-focused walking tour; which is to say that all you'll need to enjoy yourself is curiosity about Cape Town's past (and History in general) and enough stamina to walk just less than 3km in one afternoon (with stops and snacks).- If you're rejoining us, please please please please please please consider dropping us a short (or extensive) review on our Facebook Reviews or Google Reviews section as it will help spread our gospel of curiosity and playful appreciation across the internet and across the spectrum of all potential visitors to the Cape. It helps us more than you can believe!- You…
