Cape Town

After 2 nights in Livingstone, our group flew to Johannesburg to go through Customs and Immigration before boarding another plane for the trip to Cape Town. It was time for dinner when we arrived at The Table Bay Hotel, which was in a great location on the Victoria and Albert (V & A) Waterfront. A huge shopping mall was next to our hotel, and we didn't even have to go outside to visit it. By this time most of our group had head colds and we saw several of them in the mall's pharmacy. Fortunately Mark and I weren't very sick but we were able to stock up on throat lozenges there.

Early the next morning, we boarded our bus for a trip to the Cape of Good Hope and Simon's Town.

We stopped at various scenic points along the way. Unfortunately, the 3 days we were in Cape Town had very changeable weather with periods of rain.

At Camps Bay our group boarded a boat for a trip to Seal Island, which is basically a huge rocky island filled with seals. The weather was quite stormy and seas were rough, but it was only a 45-minute ride to the island.

The road to the Cape of Good Hope follows along the mountains and it's quite a steep drop to the sea.

 

We took the funicular to the top of Cape Point and decided to walk down the pathway. That's the Cape of Good Hope behind Mark. Neither of these "points" is actually the southernmost point of Africa! That distinction belongs to Cape Alguhas which is farther east.

Next we drove to Simon's Point to eat lunch and see the penguins--quite a

combination, palm trees and penguins!

 

The penguins were so much fun to watch! Tourists stay on a wooden walkway that passes right through the areas where the penguins live. This is a colony of African penguins, Speniscus demerus, that are popularly called jackass penguins because their call sounds just like a donkey braying. Then we boarded our bus for the long drive back to the hotel. Here's what we saw along the way:

More zebras! Can you see the one closer to the rocks? Such good camouflage!