Cape Peninsula

Ryan and I woke up this morning (Ryan at 3:45 a.m. and me at 5:00 a.m.) to gale force winds which apparently are quite common here given that the city is right in-between the mountains and the ocean. It wasn't looking great for a tour around the Cape Peninsula. By the time breakfast was over, though, it seemed to have cleared up. Our tour guide, Mark September, picked us up at our hotel and we were off.

We drove down the west coast, stopping along the way for a few photo ops. Turns out the wind really hand't died down at all. We were nearly getting blown off our feet and when were we close to sand, we had a mandatory exfoliation.

We snaked down the coast and eventually found ourselves at Cape Point. It is nearly the most south-western part of Africa and has spectacular views from the lighthouse at the top. They have a funicular (cable) car that takes you to the top but it wasn't working and lord knows we weren't going to hike up so we took a little shuttle. We got there just in time. LOADS of busses with gaggles of Japanese and German (a popular time for their countries to come) tourists showed up just as we were leaving.

We then took a quick drive down to the Cape of Good Hope. This is the the most south-western point in Africa. Thankfully our tour guide was well prepared for this part of the tour. All of those tourists were on our heels to get a picture exactly like the one below. People basically lose their shit when it comes to snapping this shot because everyone wants it and there is absolutely no order. Our guide schooled a bunch of girls that tried to run in front of us and we were thankful. We're Canadian, after all. What is it with our culture? We probably would have apologized to those girls for trying to take our rightful turn when they didn't want to wait.

As we were driving back from Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope, we spotted a few baboons lurking about. From what we were told they are a huge problem in the area. They have been fed by humans in the past so they are very aggressive when it comes to food, especially since the area does not have an abundance of things they can eat with a high calorie content. We were instructed to close the window immediately if they started coming towards us because they would come into the vehicle. Throughout the day, we also saw penguins, whales, ostrich, mongoose, elands, and a bunch of other furry things I'd never heard of before. Pretty cool seeing these things in the wild.

We went for lunch at Seaforth Restaurant afterward and learned a few things about our tour guide. Mark's last name, September, comes from his ancestors who were sold as slaves in the month of September. Apparently, you can look in the phone book here and find every month of the year. The guy is an encyclopedia on everything from history, to plant species, to the size of whale testicles. Seriously... did you know they weighed 500 kg. EACH? Geez, and I thought mine were big... Anyway, he's a great guy and his tour is a great orientation to the city if you ever find yourself here.

Right next door to the restaurant were a colony of penguins. They usually live on islands but their habitats are being overfished, if I remember correctly. This colony has also started disappearing as well but they're not sure why. They're moulting right now which means they can't eat for an entire month because they're not waterproof. Makes for some bitchy penguins.

We were given the choice of doing a wine tasting next or going to a little town that had a bunch of kitschy shops to look through. Duh! No brainer. We drove to the Steenberg Winery for a wine tasting and picked up a couple bottles to bring to back to the hotel room. Food and drink in this country is really quite inexpensive which is a nice surprise considering how much hotels and safari costs.

Finally, we went Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. Like the animals, there were so many plants we'd never seen before, many of them not even looking real. 3000 year old trees, prehistoric plants, and neon flowers everywhere.

It was a spectacular day. We ended it by going to dinner at Reuben's in a hotel called One and Only and managed to stay up until 9:00 p.m. Woo hoo! Now, for whatever reason, I'm the one that's up at 3:30 a.m. I am not a fan of jet lag.