What an awesome day, great views, great animals, great food, and best of all great company!
Today we’re started with a drive along Chapman’s Peak Drive, think Devil’s Slide pre-tunnel, on the wrong side of the road, and curvier, and cliffier! Luckily driving on the other side of the road was easier this time so it wasn’t nearly as daunting. We stopped at Chapman’s Peak trail and hiked up it for awhile. Talk about straight up, it was a grueling trail, hopping from boulder to boulder, going up the mountain, it was too much! We made it half way and called it quits. Still got some gorgeous views, beautiful flora, and our workout for the day.
We then drive to Hout Bay for lunch at a famed fish and chips place. Gorgeous bay with old cannons and a fun atmosphere, we grabbed our food and took it to a brewery a block away to eat. Got some great hoppy lager at Urban Brewery and had a lovely lunch of calamari, fish, peri peri shrimp, and chips. Peri peri is a red creamy sauce with a kick!
After a most filling lunch, we continue our drive along Chapman’s Peak road with it’s terrifying curves and its sheer cliffs, to Simon’s Town. It’s about an hour out of Cape Town and is one of two places you can see African penguins on the mainland. On the aptly name Boulders Beach, numerous penguins are just hanging out, doing their penguin things. They have such quirky personalities, they really make you giggle. Occasionally looking at your like you’re a really big worm and trying to figure out how to eat you, to cleaning their wings in what feels an almost superstitious way, to finally braying like donkeys at each other for imagined infractions. They are great fun! We decide to walk around the beach a bit and along the way saw some Rock Hyraxes sunbathing on the boardwalk. They’re a cute animal the looks like an enormous hamster and is the closest living relative to an elephant. Then along the boardwalk a few meters later, I was walking down some stairs and something attacks my feet! Let me tell you, I jumped! I turned around and two penguins were cuddling under the stairs and I had rudely disturbed them! So grateful I was for wearing shoes that day, those pecks would have hurt!!!!
That evening we had the delight of meeting our travel agent for dinner in Camps Bay at a delicious seafood place. Bianca has planned trips for us for many many years and has been a life saver so many times. She made this current trip happen in two weeks which is unheard of for African safaris. She was such a delight, we stayed late (for our jet-lagged selves) chatting about our lives, travel, politics and you name it, it was fabulous! Over the years we’ve gotten snippets of each other’s lives through email so it was truly wonderful to finally meet this friend in person!
5/2/21