For more photos of in and around Cape Town, here’s the smugmug gallery.
We arrived in Cape Town after flying out of Livingstone, spending some quality time in the Jo’burg airport again, in the late evening. We got a simple apartment in Camps Bay from airbnb, the hostess was very thoughtful and got us some cheese and wine on the correct assumption that we hadn’t really had a chance for anything other than airplane food. Jack had started his plant frenzy on the drive from the airport even though it was dark, spotting some Rush Bird of Paradise(Strelitzia juncea) on a hillside. This would continue.
In the morning, when we finally got to actually see Cape Town, it was simply beautiful. The thing about Cape Town is that any direction you look is postcard worthy. You can look out and see a great coastline, then if you get bored, just turn around and look at the mountains behind you.
First thing, we grabbed a taxi to go pick up our rental car in down town Cape Town. So my very first taste of driving on the other side of the road was in the middle of a city, though I have to say as city drivers anywhere in the world go, Cape Town’s are pretty good.
We found the hardest thing was keeping centered in the lane properly, and not going too far to the left. More than a few times we freaked each other out thinking we were going to sideswipe the cars parked on the road side. After we made it back to the apartment, we decided that we should go see the penguins at Boulder’s Beach, about an hour away and we decided we’d take the coast road to get there. It turns out this took us through Chapman’s Peak, which was a super narrow, twisty road with tons of blind corners. Another poor choice to start out driving on the other side with. But what an amazing drive, we pulled over every few minutes to get out and look at the views (with lots of photos of course.)
We made it to the penguins and went out to a board walk overlooking the beach where they hang out. There were tons of them just sitting out on the beach, or sunning themselves on rocks. A few were back a little ways in the trees nesting. Some were also taking trips out into the water to look for food. It was really amazing to see them in such an environment. For some reason the best part was watching them come out of the water as they crawled onto to beach, stood up and started walking up the sand. Naturally, we spent quite a while there taking pictures and watching them go about their business.
It was a lot of fun, and we made our way back the same way we came, apparently not learning from the terrifying road.