Day 21: The Wildlife of Cape Point

WOW WOW WOW!! What an amazing first full day with Brian!! Because I knew he’d be tired, I didn’t want to plan anything too far away, so we decided to go to Cape Point which is super close to Simon’s Town. We got there early, around 8:30am and entered the park. What’s so special about this place? Well, I thought it was just the Cape of Good Hope (the south western tip of Africa that was such a BIG DEAL in history when the Portuguese- namely De Gama- finally got all the way around it so Europe could reach the Indies without having to go through the Arab land routes). Careful. I teach history and could go on and on about this stuff all day! Anyway, we drive into the park and the landscape is GORGEOUS! Crazy cool rocks everywhere- with shapes and positions the likes I’ve never seen. And the fynbos is just amazing!! What is fynbos, you ask? It’s the native vegetation of the Western Cape- kind of like the rainforest of the Amazon. A ton of different plant species that are specially adapted for the conditions here. And the variety of plants is just amazing!! I would love to be here when everything is in bloom. We’re barely into the park when I see something big and black far off in the distance moving. IT WAS A WILD OSTRICH!! An ostrich. In the WILD! I was losing my mind. This thing looked just so out of place- as if it shouldn’t even be able to survive without someone taking care of it or something! It was just hard to reconcile in my mind that this bird was in the…wait for it….WILD!! And we saw more than that first one! We saw several males and a few females during our drive all through the park.

We keep driving, and Brian spots a herd of antelope- in the WILD!! Oh my god- I’ve only seen things like this in a zoo!! Research shows they are Bontebok, and my but they are gorgeous! And get a load of this- they were hunted so extensively by colonists (read: damn Europeans!), that by 1931 only seventeen (yes, 17!) of them remained! The only thing that saved them is that unlike most antelope, they can’t jump. So they couldn’t jump out of the fences people created to protect them! Now, there are about 3,000 in the wild, but only in protected areas. Please take a moment and read this article. It really is a fascinating story! We were fortunate enough to see two small herds- each with about 6 animals.

We pulled off and did a little hike. STUNNING views!! Beautiful fynbos!! And a bunch of cool lizards!

We take off down the open road again. When you were on the kind of “side roads” there were hardly any cars around, which was great! We were heading back toward the main road when something in the grass on the side caught my eye. I screamed “STOP! BACK UP!!”. And looky looky what we found! An angulate tortoise! I remembered that its species name was angulata from my visit to World of Birds. We jumped out and Brian picked him up so I could get a few pics. This guy was actually pretty fast on the ground! And simply stunning. After his photoshoot, we let him go and that’s when I saw the sign. 🙂

We continued on to a little visitor center (yes, all of this happened before we even got to the visitor center!!). There were some gorgeous trees surrounding it. They had a whale skeleton of a Southern Right Whale in the courtyard that was really cool, and several really interesting displays inside.

Next stop- some tidal pools! You know I was in heaven!! There were TONS of limpets, several different species. A few tiny little fish. LOTS of anemones. And one pool, and just one pool in one little area, had some sea stars- a type I’ve never seen before! The ocean was just beautiful…

Jumped back into the car and followed the signs to the Cape of Good Hope. As I mentioned earlier, this is the south western tip of Africa, and it was a MAJOR feat for the Europeans (Portuguese were first) to sail around it so they could reach the Indies. Vasco de Gama (you may remember him from such classes as History- Troy McClure) was the first to make it around and to the Indies. There’s a big cross here erected in his honor. (Dear world: Big whoop. Where’s the monument to the original people who this land belonged to?) Got to the Cape and there were a ton of people! Someone offered to take our picture which was very nice, then we headed out toward the tide pools! Not much in them, but a ton of protist sea weed, primarily kelp.

Next stop, the lighthouses of Cape Point. There were 2 choices. Walk up, up, UP the hill to the lighthouse, or take the funicular. I put the FUN in FUNicular, so we decided on that option!! It’s called the Flying Dutchman. And I learned that the famous ghost ship with the same name roams these waters during treacherous storms…how cool. I looked, but no Captain Jack Sparrow in sight. The view from the top was outrageous! There was ocean on both sides, and not one, but two lighthouses! The first lighthouse was built too high up and was covered in misty clouds most of the time, rendering it useless. So another was built further down the cliffs that we hiked to. My fear of heights set in, because the trail was narrow and the cliff was high and steep!

It wasn’t just the fear of heights I had to face. My other fear was here as well. Baboons. But I learned that they really aren’t so bad, and no where near as scary as the macaques in Malaysia. That said, I wouldn’t go anywhere near them with food, but they seemed pretty well behaved.

Speaking of food, we ate our picnic lunch and then drove off the main road again and away from all of the cars, tour buses, and tourists. Here we saw more ostrich and bontebak. The road ended, but the map said something called “Venus Pools” was a little further up, so we hiked up there. WOW! Gorgeous! It is a natural rock tidal pool that is filled when the tide comes in. Brian laid down on a huge rock and said he could take a nap. I told him not on my watch. (See above baboon captions!). We stayed a little while. It was really gorgeous, relaxing, and peaceful, and only a few people around.

We drove on the rest of the roads we hadn’t been on yet, and left the park around 2:30. We spent a good 6 hours in Cape Point and really loved it! The views are out of this world, the landscape is just stunning, and there are ANIMALS!!!

I knew we couldn’t come home that early, because Brian would fall asleep. He really needed to stay up until at least 8:30. So I suggested we go check out the penguins. We parked the car at the bottom of the hill to the house, and walked the boardwalk all the way to Seaforth beach and back. Came home, cooked dinner, planned out our INSANE AWESOME adventure for tomorrow, did a little more planning of things for the rest of the week, fed the porcupines and filled the sun/sugar bird feeders, and went through all of our pictures to narrow them down. Brian’s sleeping next to me now while I write this. He’s such a damn trooper, and I love him so much…especially when we’re traveling the world together!! We do it so well. 🙂