I have had SUCH a good week. And I had a great weekend! So I
guess I’ll mention by way of great weekend: a group of us went to Boulders
Beach and the Cape of Good Hope on Saturday. Boulders Beach is home to a colony
of South Africa’s Jackass Penguins. Jackass penguins because of the donkey-like
bray noise they make. We start off at this entrance, pay our money, and go
through the turnstyles to a boardwalk. As we walk down the boardwalk to the
beach, we start to see them: a few cute little penguins doing penguin things
amongst the bushes. This is obviously breathtaking and amazing and we all stop
to take pictures. The couple of penguins we see at this point are too far away
for me to get a good picture of with my Blackberry camera (my primary camera bc
my Samsung point-and-shoot is quite awful), so I continue on down. At the beach
there is a terrific mass of penguins laying a about, waddling around, snuggling
– its GREAT. We take a bunch of pictures and that’s all great and stuff, but
I’m getting a bit irritated that we’re stuck on this elevated boardwalk and
separated from the penguins. I had heard tales prior to coming of a place where
you can actually go and be with the penguins to waddle about, swim, etc with
them. Cailey and I are discussing this with each other and we would just like
to know, WHERE IS THIS PLACE? HOW can we get closer to the penguins!?? We being
to scheme a return trip sometime and all that, and before we know it, the group
is heading back out.
We follow along and realize we’re not walking back to the
bus but rather away from it… hmmm where could we be going? We look over as we
walk and begin to see little penguins swimming and playing on a beach and
there’s no boardwalk. We walk a little further and see we’re going down to this
beach and if we just swim across this nice calm looking stretch of water, we
shall have our change to frolic with the penguins. And, Cailey has a waterproof
camera that can swim over with us! We get to the head of the group, and as we
enter the beach and everyone is settling their stuff in, Cailey and I strip and
jet for the water. The penguins are SO CLOSE. I doggy paddle across and we
eventually get to the other side and there they are!! We are amongst them!
Commence the photoshoot!!
It’s the weirdest most magical surreal thing: I’m on this
incredibly gorgeous beach - clear water, interesting rock formations, white
sand - its warm out (no ice) and I’m in a swim suit, and there I’m playing with
PENGUINS! They’re pretty chill; they just do their thing as we run about taking
photos with them (from a mostly respectable distance). This also adds to the
oddity of the whole thing. Some dude
comes over later and sticks his Blackberry in a penguins face to take its
picture and the penguin like starts hissing at him and sticking his open beak
towards this guy’s phone. And the guy doesn’t quit. I am worried that I might
watch this guy get attacked by a penguin. Maybe that would be kind of cool
though (and serve him right). He finally backs off though and I don’t get to
see any penguin attack action.
After much quality time with the penguins, we head out from
Boulders Beach to Cape Point. The Cape of Good Hope, contrary to popular
belief, is actually NOT the southern-most part of Africa and is not where the
Indian and Atlantic oceans officially meet. This would a bit further east at
Cape Arugula or something. I have a cool moment there while running around – I remember
learning about the Cape of Good Hope in school when I was a kid; I never
thought then that I would actually go to see the it. It is cool to be in the
home of the Flying Dutchman. It smells funny there and I read about a legend later
on Wikipedia that explains that this is because of a ghost that farts there,
like the Farting Dutchman or something. It smelled bad enough out on the actual
point to make me a believer.
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