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Post date: Jul 10, 2010 6:20:45 PM
On Day 3, we got up a little later - about 11:00 - and decided that, because Table Mountain had a fog cover on it, that we'd go instead to the Cape of Good Hope. The Cape of Good Hope was originally thought by European explorers to be the southernmost point on the African continent. It was later discovered to be not as southerly as Cape Agulhas, but it is MUCH, MUCH prettier.
First, naturally, we did breakfast at a quaint brand new pub that was at the end of the street where we were staying. Everyone but me decided to do, um, a large tomato juice-based drink to go along with their breakfasts. When you're traveling across a large continent and a large ocean, apparently you need many vitamins to help you adjust to jet lag.
Then, we headed down the coast towards Cape Point, which is the actual point along the Cape of Good Hope. The first stop was at Camps Bay, which is a posher area that is a suburb of Cape Town. It's along the mountain formation known as the 12 Apostles and has a beautiful beach view. Surprisingly, the beach had a bunch of foam on it and what seemed to be sea kelp. The ocean was raging that morning and it was very windy. Looks like it would have been great for surfers, but only with wet suits, as the water is extremely cold!
Along the way, we stopped off in Boulders Bay, which is home to a very large penguin colony. In the parking lot, we also met with a rabid Japanese fan who had dressed up as a samurai. You'll have to check out the photo album for some pictures of him. The penguins are smaller than you might expect; these are African penguins, which are not nearly as large as their Antarctic cousins.
Finally, we made our way down to the Cape of Good Hope. The national park closes at sunset, and we got there a little over an hour before it closed, so we had to be hasty to get through the park and down to the actual Cape Point area. As we arrived to the walkway up to the two lighthouses on Cape Point, we saw someone who can only be described as a "touron" - a combination of tourist and moron. He was trying to feed a baboon potato chips. For those who do not know, baboons are extremely aggressive when they think that there is food available and will kill people. Fortunately, park rangers yelled at the touron and he desisted from injuring himself and others.
We finally made it to the main lighthouse and then took the trail down to the original lighthouse. Cape Point's scenic views are really beyond words, and I wish that we would have had more time to explore around the area; however, the sign at the beginning of the park ominously warned us of the 500 rand (approximately $67 USD) fine for leaving the park late, so, with long faces, we turned around and headed back.
At this point, I should mention that we had rented a Kia Picanto, which is a very small four door car. At we were roaring back through the national park, a speed bump jumped up out of the asphalt right in front of us. I'm pretty sure we got all four wheels off the ground, as in the 14 milliseconds between me seeing said speed bump and us getting there, I was not able to downshift and hit the breaks. I blame the right hand steering wheel and driving on the left hand side of the road. Fortunately, the axles, much like the rest of the car, were made of plastic, so no damage was done.
Our last stop of the night was in a small town called Fishhoek - pronounced like the word fishhook - where we grabbed dinner at an out-of-the-way restaurant which served enormous portions of fresh seafood. I recalled the tipping point case studies from my systems dynamics class and wondered if our dinner had emptied the local ocean of all of its sea life. Given the fait accompli of the situation, we consumed seafood like we were on the brink of starvation and then, fighting food coma, returned back to Cape Town.
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