Penguins and Points

We wanted to get our last journey to Cape Town started since we still had about five hours drive in front of us but had to spend just a little bit of time exploring Wilderness first. Wilderness has some of the best beaches on the Garden Route and also a beautiful lagoon right off the beach. Our guest house was right on the lagoon on the Touw River so we enjoyed our breakfast overlooking the river and then went to explore a bit.

We first went to the beach and had a walk around. It was a lovely morning, just a bit cloudy but we enjoyed walking up and down the beach and dipping our feet in the freezing cold Indian Ocean! We happened to have a shark sighting too! Al biet it a dead one, but the six foot shark was just floating around the shoreline. We weren't exactly sure what kind it was but I wouldn't want to meet a live one! After the beach, we took a short stroll on the boardwalk through the lagoon before we finally departed for Cape Town.

We arrived at our hotel in Cape Town a few hours later. We were staying at the Donolga House which was probably my favorite place we stayed. The Donolga House is in Constantia, a suburb of Cape Town that is known for it's wineries. Our room was fantastic and they had a beautiful garden and pool area over looking the mountains so we decided to spend our afternoon laying by the pool and enjoying the last bit of sunshine since our previous few days had been so cloudy!

Being that it was New Years Eve, we had reservations at a restaurant in one of the local wineries for dinner. We had a wonderful dinner, where Pat got to have his second taste of African wildlife, Springbok. We enjoyed our evening with some champagne and of course, some of the winery's own wine. Well at least Pat got to enjoy it! As we were both tired from the long drive that morning, we headed back to the hotel around 11 or so to ring in the new year.

The next morning we woke up rather early, not by our own choice though! A thunderstorm was moving through the area and the thunder was loud enough to wake us up a couple times! We were expecting 80s and sunshine in South Africa, certainly not rain or thunderstorms! We spent our morning relaxing and eating a fantastic breakfast before we finally decided we needed to at least go do something since we only had a few days in Cape Town.

We headed south towards Cape Point in hopes that the weather would clear up. Luckily, as soon as we reached our first stop, the sun was just starting to peak out! We pulled into Boulder Beach in Simon's town so we could see the African penguins! Most of the beach was fenced off but we found an area where we could get pretty up close and personal! We had so much fun filming the penguins and just laughing at them as the waddle around everwhere!

After the penguins we finished our drive to Cape Point. It isn't the most southern point of Africa but close enough! As we were driving in, we had our second animal sighting of the day as a little troop of baboons were playing off to the left of the road! We stopped and watched them for a bit before continuing to the end of the road.

Cape Point is a national park with lots of hiking as well as biking and driving trails. We decided to walk up to the light house to get a little exercise. The views of the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point were gorgeous so we stopped quite a bit for some photo ops (and so I could rest!) We finished up and made our way back to the hotel to enjoy the last bit of sunshine by the pool!