Today’s event was a tour to the Peninsula south of Cape Town to the Cape of Good Hope, and especially an opportunity to view African penguins and ostriches in the wild. We spent much of the day with the tour guide, Charlton, who explained so much of the history, the culture, and the wildlife of the area.
Of course the highlight was being able to see those super cute penguins. We had seen them at the San Diego Zoo, but to see them in real life was so much fun. We were on boardwalks, but we were able to get quite close to the penguins. It was the season where there were baby penguins, who now were about as tall as their parents and covered with grey down, and some of the penguins were molting and feathers were coming off. Some hung out by themselves and waddled so cutely. Others lined up as though they were in a yoga class all facing the same direction. These fascinating creatures used to have a much broader range where they lived. We heard sadly that between them being killed, and the fishing trawlers taking away so much of the fish that the Penguins would normally eat. And, of course, change in climate. Our guide shared it may be within five years that there are no more wild penguins in southern Africa. In all of our wild animal sightings, it was very poignant that so many of these magnificent creatures are now endangered.
We appreciate that people with conservation mindedness have worked to save these penguins. In 1982 there were just two breeding pears who were alive in this area, now there are 3000. And they’ve created a penguin sanctuary, and money from the visitors goes to help take care of injured penguins. Bravo to those who stand for the animals.
In the same area as the penguins were Rock Hyrax. These animals look like rodents but are actually related to the Elephant. We saw a number of them including one who seemed to pose for us.
And then there were ostriches just wandering around alongside the road. Again, we’ve seen ostriches in zoos and actually in farms but never in the wild. Around mini corners, we saw ostriches poking their heads up and then crossing in front of our vehicle. The animal experiences in Africa have been super juicy.
There were also several other stops at shops and places with beautiful photographic views. Everything is gorgeous around here so we took a lot of good photos. We continued to travel with some of the same people who are on our hybrid Toor. Everyone was pleasant to be around and it was fun to continue to share beautiful things together.
The at Cape Point National Park was magnificent. This was the south-western Africa’s farthest point, also known as Cape of Good Hope. We had to of course get our requisite photo with the sign sharing this. The actual southern most point of Africa is about 100 miles to the east.
Then we also took a funicular, sort of a sideways railcar, up closer to the top. The views were so beautiful. And then another big chunk of steps took us up to the lighthouse. This one was no longer in use and so little rundown. But we always take advantage of an opportunity to see a lighthouse. The area offshore was known as being treacherous and many ships were lost as they were trying to go from Europe and West Africa to India.
The trip finally brought us back to our hotel late afternoon and we were tired! We grabbed as many photos of the beautiful area as we could. We drove through part of the wine country, which we didn’t have a chance to go visit. We felt being from Southern California that we had many more opportunities to do wine tasting back at home, and wanted to use our time doing unique things in South Africa.
We poked around a little bit, got some dinner. But we were aware we were going to need to get up and be picked up at our hotel at 3 AM. So to bed at about 8:30. Our Cape Town time was coming to an end.
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