After taking a little time to recover from our VERY long transit from Bangkok to South Africa, we went on a rainy day trip with our friends to see some of Cape Town's local scenery. The city is beautiful. It had mountains and a beach and multiple little picturesque bays. The sunset above is the view from the terrace of our friend Martin's home.. every day's sunset was incredible.
The next day we went on a tour of the wine country just 45 minutes outside Cape Town. Much like San Francisco, this beautiful waterside town has hills behind it that support incredible vineyards.. many producing some of the best white wine in the world for many years.
Our first stop was Eagle's Nest in Stellenbosh.. a small vineyard with very little if any export. We had a nice, private rainy day wine tasting of everything they produced. Many glasses later, we were in a fine mood indeed.
We then visited Rustenberg Vineyards whose wine is extensively exported. Everything was incredible so we bought several cases to take with us on safari later that week.
A nice romantic wine country lunch followed way up on a mountain.. the food (and wine) were superb.
The next day we drove down to Boulder's Beach near Simon's town just south of Cape Town. Several rare African penguins had decided to call this beach home several years ago and thanks to the conservation efforts of the government, a large section of beach was protected as their living quarters. The colony of penguins now numbers more than 3,000. They are very friendly and not at all afraid of humans. They are quite a bit smaller than the Emperor Penguins that most of us are used to seeing in the zoo, but they are adorable and very social.
We continued on to the "end of the world": Cape Point. This is just about the most Southern part of Africa and is the place where the Indian Ocean and Atlantic Ocean meet. The two oceans are very different colors and it is very magical to see them meet and combine. This beautiful place was also the site of our first major baboon interaction. Multiple warning signs had advised us to beware of the baboons but not really knowing what this meant we took no special precautions. Just after getting out of our car, a large baboon with a baby baboon on it's back walked right up behind our friend Calvin and pulled a pack of candy right out of his pocket. The baboon then ran up to Eric trying to get a pack of gummy worms that Christian had made him carry. In an attempt to ward off the attack, Eric threw the package of gummy worms at the baboon who deftly caught them and expertly opened the package without difficulty and started feeding them to its baby. Even Christian can't open gummy worms that quickly.
After this near death experience, the remainder of our Cape Point trip was incredible including the sighting of many rare birds, incredible views, and seeing a mother and baby whale swimming along the coast.
After this long day of exploring we drove down to Kalk Bay and had a few drinks in this very artsy part of town where people are famous for walking everywhere barefoot.
After another nights sleep, we loaded up everything, closed down Martin's house and started our trip to the bush to see how 8 city boys handled being on safari -- roughing it and getting down with the live (and not always so friendly!) animals… to be continued!
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