Cape Town Day 4

Saturday was mostly taken up by another driving excursion, this time down the Cape of Good Hope itself. We stopped first in Muizenberg to watch the surfers and check out the very colorful bathing chalets along the beach. This was also my first ever glimpse of the Indian Ocean! We then drove down to Simon's Town where I bought a Zimbabwean sculpture of a thinker holding a drinking pot with furrowed brow (since I couldn't actually get to Zimbabwe on this trip). We also had lunch there and tried to check out a large, single-masted sail boat but it was in the military enclosure (Simon's Town is the birthplace of the South African navy). We hopped back in the car and drove down the coast a ways where we pulled over to a beach area where we got to see penguins! Em explained that we had to jump over a low stone fence onto a rock outcropping to see them. I quickly vaulted over and found myself almost landing on top of a parent and baby penguin. The baby was almost as big as the parent, especially with all of the fluff! I apologized for almost jumping on them and then we walked over the rock a bit to find many penguins hiding in the bushes on the leeward side of the rock to take refuge against the wind. When we walked over to the windward side of the rock, we discovered why they were taking refuge. Em and I almost got blown off the side of the rock! We got back in the car and continued down the Cape. Em pointed out to me where her baboon incident took place (see Em's blog linked on the bar to the right) but we never got to see any baboons. We drove down the coast a bit farther and then cut across through the mountains to the Atlantic side of the Cape and then started driving back up. On the way back to Cape Town we drove along Chapman's Peak overlooking Hout Bay with its sheer cliffs dropping straight down into the ocean. Em and I had dinner at a little Italian restaurant called Diva's and then met up with Niv for drinks. Niv and Emily A went to a club and so Em, Eliot and I went to what was supposed to be a jazz bar called Dizzy's in Camps Bay but it only had a cover band (but no cover, thankfully!). We chatted for a while over a glass of wine and then headed back out into the rain to go home. It really is the rainy season!