Wonders of the World

"I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery - air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, 'this is what it is to be happy.'" ~Sylvia Plath! The Bell Jar

Cindy: 

Today was incredible. We started at 9:00am with a trip to table mountain via cable car. From the top of table mountain you can see all of Cape Town and the west coast of South Africa. Absolutely beautiful. then we were off to see the penguins at the boulders in the table top national park. Nicki is posting pictures of both of these for you. From there we were off to the Cape of Good Hope where we took a tram part of the way up to the lighthouse and hiked the rest of the way - also very beautiful. At this point we've only seen the penguins and were looking for other critters - I'll let Nicki tell you what happened after the light house. 

We had a wonderful late lunch half way back to Cape Town and Andrew was nice enough to explain the city history and architecture once we made it back to Cape Town. We had a very fun and informative day.

Tonight we had dinner with Alan Petersen and his family. We had a fabulous home cooked meal and learned a ton about the current South African political environment. It was fascinating. We got back to the hotel just a little while ago with our heads swimming with all kinds of thoughts. What a great way to learn about this country.

The history, animals, politics and people.......all shared with Nicki.......it doesn't get much better than this. Looking forward to our adventures tomorrow. 

More to come.

Nicki:

Let me just say... Today was AMAZING! I was overwhelmed with all the beauty, history, and wildlife that Capetown has to offer! And that's only the tip of Africa! We started out the day with a wonderful excursion to Table Mountain, which has recently been titled one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. There's a plaque and everything, see?

Anyway, in order to get up there, we had to drive about halfway up the mountain, and then a rotating cable car/gondola took us up the rest of the steep slope. Let me just say how proud I am of my mom for going up that mountain. That took a lot of courage and zero drugs, which I'm very proud of her for. Just a little tight squeezing of my hand.

Once we got to the top, we realized how completely worth it the terrifying trip was. I mean, look at this view: 

Andrew told us about these little creatures called dassies. The closest thing I could compare them to is a marmot, if you know what that is. Dassies are pretty much the cutest little furry animal you've ever seen. I can't get over them. I want one. They live in these little burrowed out rock formations and come out to warm themselves in the sun during the day. 

Aren't they adorable?! Also, here's a fun fact: their closest relative is the elephant. I think that's hilarious. 

Anyway, table mountain was just gorgeous and is completely and totally worthy of being a Wonder of the World. The cliffs and rock formations were just incredible. It's amazing to be able to find such tall mountains so close to the ocean. Another interesting fact: back in the day when the world was flooding, the entire flatlands of the Capetown area was under water, and the peninsula that goes out to the Cape of Good Hope were a series of islands off the coast of Southern Africa. So the mountain we were standing atop of was t one point just some random island.

And guess what! There was a gift shop at the end of it! 

Next, Andrew, our guide, drove us down the east coast of the peninsula toward the Cape. It was quite a long drive and quite an extensive history lesson. But that's okay, because I found it all really fascinating. Apparently, the prime minister of South Africa or something owned all this land and governed the area and his son eventually took over and it all went to hell, as these stories tend to do when children take over the family business (or the family government, as the case may be). The scenery was absolutely gorgeous, though. 

We ended up in this small beach town where Capetowners of the olden days used to go for their summer holidays (which is at Christmas time and I found that all to b extremely backwards and strange). This town is where a colony of penguins has sort of taken over. These are African penguins, though they were originally called jackass penguins because of the donkey-like sound that they make. It's quite ugly. But naturally, being me, as soon as I saw the penguins, I went crazy and started waddling around trying to be accepted as one of them. I also took way too many pictures...

And that's not even all of them... Those are just the cutest ones. So then we went to the gift shop, got some souvenirs, and took off for our next destination: the Cape of Good Hope! The area recently became a national park, and they are trying to reintroduce some of the animals that were originally driven out of the area or destroyed by the Dutch when they first settled the land in the late 1500s. Andrew told us that we might see zebra, but there are only 3 or 4 of them in the park, so we didn't ever get to see them. But we weren't disappointed, because as we were searching for them, these guys popped up out of nowhere: 

I was definitely not expecting to see ostriches today.

We finally reached Cape Point, and we climbed up to the lighthouse to get a good vantage point. It was absolutely gorgeous.

Then we drove down to the actual Cape of Good Hope, which, despite what you may have learned in your childhood history and geography classes, is NOT, the southernmost point of Africa. But it's pretty darned close. 

We had to get it in both English and Afrikaans so we looked more cultured. You know how that goes.

On the way to the Cape, we had been seeing signs telling us to beware of baboons because the are dangerous and attracted by food, but we never saw them going down to the cape. The signs made them seem like they were everywhere. We were just about to give up and put our cameras when suddenly:

They come tearing down the road in search of someone to terrorize, and they found their victims right in front of us: 

He got off the car right after that, realizing that those girls didn't have any sugary foods for them to abscond with. This breed of baboon is called the chacma baboon, even though Andrew calls them gourmet baboons because they like to eat oysters and other shellfish. They're so fancy. 

Then we headed back up the west coast of the peninsula, stopped for lunch and had a lovely risotto dish with autumn nuts and seeds and some prawns on top. It was amazing. The next leg of the drive was solution gorgeous. We drove up the side of a hill to see this beautiful beach: 

And then the road turned into this amazing cliffside highway: 

And then we stopped off on the side of the road and got some beautiful shots of the bay, and even spotted some whales off in the distance! 

Then we made our way back up to Capetown, through the downtown area, and back to the hotel where we freshened up and got ready for dinner. Andrew took us to a man's house named Alan who also works for the safari company and has grown up in the Capetown area. It was really nice to spend time with local people and really understand what life in South Africa is really like. Also, the food was amazing and I now have a new favorite liquor. So watch out!