<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">A trip to gay-friendly Cape Town reveals to Brendan Lemon why its physical beauty—and cultural contradictions—make it endlessly fascinating. By Brendan Lemon

Cape Town used to be a place Americans went to feel smug, where we could congratulate ourselves for having, at least officially, shed the racist ways that were still law in South Africa. These days, it’s the Capetonians who are feeling a little superior, for while their country struggles with poverty, unemployment, and one of the world’s highest AIDS rates, they live in a city that is highly livable (think Los Angeles 30 years ago), a region that is stunningly beautiful (Napa Valley without the traffic), and a nation that, almost alone in the world, has enshrined equal rights for gay men and lesbians in its constitution. All this in an economic climate that, with the relative strength of the dollar against the country’s rand currency, means meals in the top restaurants are $25 per person and oceanfront two-bedroom flats can be had for a hundred grand.

At the end of a recent, cape-concentrated visit, arranged by the wonderful gay luxury travel company DavidTours, I felt ready to proclaim the country the most interesting in the world right now, in much the same manner that I think Berlin is the most intriguing city. The comparison may strike you as strange. Because of its cold weather and often cynical populace, Berlin would appear to be nothing like the openhearted cape with its Mediterranean climate. Yet apartheid, the brutal system of racial separation that went into effect in 1948, is much like the Berlin Wall, according to Cape Town’s resident Dame Edna, Evita Bezuidenhout: “Officially it ceased to exist, but in the minds of millions it’s still there.” The fact of having to accommodate rapid change within living memory means that South Africans, like Berliners, are still sorting out their feelings; they’re adjusting. This provisional, transitional status makes each place a fascinating mixture—of nationalities, races, sexual combinations.</font>