Greetings from the Cape of Good Hope—The Most Southwestern Point on the African Continent…..

…..and a beautiful cape it is too.

Today is Saturday and I slept in a little later than usual and caught a tour south of Cape Town to the famous Cape of Good Hope—the feared part of any good sailors worst nightmares in the old sailing ships. When the weather is good—like it was today—it is considered the “fairest” of all capes. But when the weather is bad—well, the shipwrecks too numerous to inventory tell that story.

We had a small group: me and a woman from St.Louis, some Greek people, two Germans, and a couple of Brazilians. It was foggy when we left but I had worked on that part of the coast earlier in the week so I didn’t miss anything but the further south we went, the better the weather became and by the time we reached the Cape it was beautiful and today was the hottest day I’ve experienced on this trip. We drove through little villages with names like Llandudno, Hout Bay, Noordhoek, Simons Town and Fish Hoek. We also drove through the famous South African vineyard country and near the cape the landscape was barren but very green and beautiful. The water changes colors from beautiful blue to emerald green and the waves were active today but the wind wasn’t that bad.

At the Cape, we took a cable car up to the old Good Hope lighthouse and took more photos then made a fairly strenuous hike out to the far peak. Over the centuries, the sailors used the Cape of Good Hope as the measure for where the Atlantic Ocean became the Pacific. Scientifically it’s not true but everything here is named “Two Oceans.” After riding the cable car down we drove over to the Southwestern point of the continent and took some more photos. We then drove back north on the “Pacific” side which is really called False Bay and still part of the Atlantic.

Along the way we stopped for a baboon colony—I didn’t realize they were indigenous here but they are strictly protected. In many ways they are nuisances but the tourists love them. They stop traffic, put on a show, then wander off and break into some homeowner’s home and trash it out looking for food.

As we continued north we stopped and visited another animal sanctuary that surprised me. I knew that the Equator runs through Kenya which is pretty far north of here but I didn’t realizehow close the tip of South Africa is to Antarctica longitudinal-wise. They have African pinguins here and I was surprised to learn that. We stopped at a penguin beach and went out on a boardwalk literally through the middle of a colony of them. The sun was not today and they were sunning themselves. One part of the beach had the females nesting eggs while the rest of the beach was a comedy of motion. Penguins are really funny the way they walk but once they are in the water they are graceful and beautiful. I’m attaching a short video here—click on the triangle in the left corner to start.

We got back late in the afternoon so I showered and pretty much hung around the room until supper.

Tomorrow, I have another neat tour planned…..