Penguins and Capes

Unfortunately, no. The penguins weren't wearing capes...

Our first stop this morning was to pick up our rental car, and we walked through Bo-Kaap on the way to see the colorful houses. The sun was just rising on the houses so it was beautiful to see them in that sort of sunlight.

Now that we finally have our own wheels again, we were anxious to get on the road. We drove to Simon's Town where we went to see the penguins. We took the scenic route right along the ocean and it was gorgeous. Similar to the Great Ocean Road in Australia, we were just hugging the cliff side driving right along the ocean. It was a beautiful drive. 

Simon's Town seemed to be a cute little town but we rushed through in a hurry to see the penguins. We entered through the visitor's center where you had to pay 70 rand per person to enter. You can instead skip the visitor center and go right towards Boulder Beach which you don't initially have to pay and you can see some penguins along the walkway. Eventually though if you want to get on the beach going that direction you will need to pay the same price. But if you pay it once at the visitor center you can just show your ticket, so you only have to pay the R70 once.

Anyway, the visitor center was worthwhile as we were able to get much closer to the main colony of penguins and see a whole bunch of them. We even got to see lots of babies and and also some eggs hiding under some of the penguins. They were also separated by a fence though so you weren't able to interact with them.

Then we walked to the right of the visitor center and walked along the boardwalk where you could see some more penguins in the brush. Then we got to the beach, which was the coolest part in my opinion. You could see more penguins from the main part of the beach but they were again separated by a fence. But you could sneak away from the main beach by climbing under and over the huge rocks back the other way (towards the visitor center). This area was more secluded so less people. And also, penguins roaming free! There were swimming in the water and sunning themselves on rocks. They'd also just randomly waddle by. It was awesome. I got in the water and they just swam around me. Here's a video (there are more videos and pictures on the album on the right):

Even without the penguins though it was a beautiful beach. Soft sand and I loved that it had all of the huge boulders which made it seem more mysterious and secluded. The water was absolutely frigid though. Matt and I found a secluded little area between some rocks and that's where we set up our stuff and ate our lunch. As I was exploring around in the water I also found a starfish! I've never found one in the wild before. Then a guy told me he had seen several larger ones earlier but I never did find those. We also spotted a couple of dassies, the animal we saw yesterday on the mountain. They are curious little creatures.

After we left there we drove down to Table Mountain National Park to see Cape Point and Cape of Good Hope. We made it first to Cape Point and climbed up to the light house. There were gorgeous views from up there.

Then we went to Cape of Good Hope, which is the most "south-western" point of the African continent. It's also commonly perceived to be the meeting point of the Atlantic and Indian oceans, although that's not geographically true. But we climbed up to the top to check out the views which were also amazing.

The whole park was really cool as well to just drive around. There are lots of wild animals. We saw lots of little lizards, and I also saw a huge lizard bigger than my forearm on a rock as we drove by (I wasn't quick enough to get a picture). We also saw lots of elands, which are the second-largest type of antelope. Some of them were really big and had huge spiral horns.

We also saw some wild ostriches! I really didn't expect that. We saw 3 different ones.

We kept seeing signs for wild baboons and it sounds like it's pretty common to see them but we never did. I was a bit bummed when we were leaving the park that we hadn't, but turns out for nothing. We saw them on our drive home! There were several of them running down the road. One had a little baby on it's back! They were really big, bigger than most dogs. I was surprised. They also were really close to our car. I was able to grab a couple of pictures:

I better get to bed- another big day planned tomorrow!