On Anthony’s birthday we awoke to another spectacular sunny warm day. Having planned to visit wine country, we opted to change our visit to The Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve for April 10th due to an expected rain that never arrived. The visit began with a beautiful scenic drive as we twisted out of Cape Town through a southern route that hugged the coastline and offered spectacular views of the Atlantic Ocean, surrounding cliffs, and majestic mountains. The road follows the scenic Chapman’s Peak Drive and onward to Simon’s Town and the famous Boulder’s Beach, home to one of the largest colonies of African penguins (numbers show a population of approximately 2500). ginnie was looking forward to seeing the penguins since we booked our trip in October, so she was pretty excited to finally see them.
After securing our parking and walking a few minutes to the beach, we traveled along a few different designated narrow boardwalks to view the penguins. They were all over the beach, some in the water swimming and fishing, others enjoying the sun and sand, and many mothers taking care of their newborn babies (colored brown at birth) and minding their eggs. The penguin colony was really pretty awesome to observe and the walkways allowed visitors to get up close without disturbing their natural habitat. We took a lot of photos and even shot some video (see end of post) of the different groups as they waddled around the beach, enjoyed the surf, and acted silly. Unfortunately, there was no dancing a la Happy Feet, but nonetheless, they were a really interesting group for observation.
As we left the Boulder’s Beach area we were immediately struck by the large number of street signs that read “! Baboons” This was interesting for many reasons. First off, we had read in many places that there are large numbers of wild baboons roving around in great numbers across South Africa, yet we hadn’t seen any in our travels as of today, secondly, it was just really strange to see an actual red triangular street sign that warned of the presence of baboons on the road. Anyways, we headed further down the road and eventually reached the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve. The Reserve is part of an extensive national parks system across South Africa and its size encompasses the entire Cape Peninsula. Upon reaching the visitor’s center one can become quickly overwhelmed by the number of trail options for hiking, running, cycling, and walking. We perused the various offerings and settled on two (The Cape of Good Hope Trail and a second smaller trail that would pass a few other areas of interest). After leaving the center we made our way to the popular Cape Point area and trekked the somewhat short, but incredibly beautiful trail to the old lighthouse and WWII radio towers (established when U-Boats began to unexpectedly threatened Cape Town and the surrounding cities during WWII). These little coves carved into the rock offered some amazing views of the Atlantic Ocean from all sides. Did we mention that it was incredibly windy here? Thus the reason for the Cape of Good Hope – so named by early explorers due to the vicious assaults doled out on passing ships. The Cape was first discovered in 1488 by Bartolomeu Dias from Spain. Over its long and tumultuous history it has single handedly been responsible for hundreds of shipwrecks (many of which can be viewed at different points along some of the more extensive hiking routes).
As we headed back down the hill, we opted to trek out to the nearby Old Lighthouse Trail which actually followed along the entire Cape Point peninsula and ended at pretty darn near land’s end. It was a short trail that we had initially taken because our map misled us to believe that it was the actual southernmost point, however, as we neared the end, we read an additional map en-route that more clearly designated where the actual Cape of Good Hope point lay (just a lee bit to our left) and we opted to finish this trail and then head for the famous Cape of Good Hope just a short 1-hr walk away. The Cape of Good Hope is the South-Western most point on Africa’s continent and is represented by an immensely rocky coastline surrounded on all sides by crashing waves and rough seas driven by fierce winds. We spent some time here just taking in the views, walking on the rocks, and then taking a picture of us standing at the famous sign marking the area's latitude and longitude.
As we left the Cape of Good Hope area and began our travels through the remaining areas of the park we were suddenly startled by quite an interesting sight – Baboons were sitting on the roofs and hoods of cars that had been parked along the surf beach (some even had passengers in them waiting patiently for the mischievous beasts to alight from their vehicles). This was our first of many baboon sightings so we opted to slow to a stop, shoot a few pictures, and move along in an nonthreatening manner (we didn’t want them coming after us!) We spent the remainder of the afternoon visiting many different parts of the park and viewing some interesting things that included more baboons, beaches, cool rock formations, large memorials and dedications to Bartolomeu Dias and Vasco de Gama (early explorers who gained notoriety for their discoveries and charting of the Cape of Good Hope and surrounding peninsula). Our visit to the park was truly an exceptional experience and it was awe-inspiring to observe the incredible beauty of our planet, as well as the powerful forces that shape and create such amazing places.
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