We had a looooong adventure today! Our goal was to drive to Cape Alguhas- the southern most tip of Africa. What is there to do there? Take a picture with the sign and turn around after an almost 5 hour drive. 🙂 So as always, we planned extra little excursions around our main one.
We left Simon’s Town early and drove along the beach to Somerset West. There, we continued along the beach, and the views were outstanding! In one area, it was miles and miles of nothing but fantastic shoreline on one side and massive mountains on the other. One of the most scenic drives we’ve ever been on! (Cuba wins out because it was a straight up adventure- the infrastructure is too good here! 🙂 ).
We made our way to the sleepy little town of Betty’s Bay. Seriously, there were only 3 things going on here- baboons, a penguin colony, and a bunch of rock hyraxes!! No restaurants or stores or anything. Just a lot of houses on a beautiful little bay kind of in the middle of no where…
No opposable thumbs means no hitchhiking!
This guy was determined to jump down about 1m off the top of this rock. We were worried for him, but he made it!
Cute little hyrax
Beautiful, but oh so sleepy, Betty’s Bay
At the next town, we saw a biltong shop and decided to stop in to see if they had anything more exotic than the springbok and kudu we had bought a few days ago (and have yet to try!). They only had beef, but they had some big slabs of it hanging up so we said we’d take a slab of it. They cut it into almost paper thin pieces. It didn’t have much seasoning, but it was good. Quite greasy though! It’s “greased” its way through the bag in just a couple of days!
Now rarely do we take the route Google suggests. I look at the map, see where we’re trying to go, and if there’s a more interesting looking road, we take it. We’ve ended up on roads that aren’t even on google maps by doing this…and that’s what we call an adventure! I wanted to stick as close to the coastline as we could, even though google maps insisted that we go inland a bit and around. We soon figured out why google maps was so insistent, after we ended up on a 12 mile long dirt road in the middle of a bunch of farms! But, had we not done this, we would have never seen a farmer with his 3 dogs herding sheep. 🙂
We finally hit another bit of pavement, and then….another 12 miles of dirt road!! Soon the farmlands turned into areas that had a sign indicating that this land was Alguhas National Sanctuary. Brian spotted a MASSIVE grey bird waaaaaaaaaay out in the middle of a field. We couldn’t see much with our bare eye. It literally looked like some kind of an oddly colored ostrich it was so big. When I zoomed in with the camera, I saw that it was actually some kind of heron/egret looking bird!
Headed back down the dirt road and we simultaneously inhaled, gasped, and sucked every ounce of oxygen out of that car. We had run over a tortoise!! Luckily, Brian saw it at the last second and straddled it. We backed up, and the poor little guy was completely closed up in his shell (who can blame him?!). We took him out of the middle of the road, put him in the weeds on the side he was heading toward, and deemed ourselves “Heroes of Africa”. We’re waiting for a knock at the door with our prize… 😉 And as always, when we see a tortoise, there’s a sign not too far off. And there it was, when we hit pavement again. Completely different from the normal signs we see, and in three languages. I’m assuming one is Dutch and one is Africaans, but I have no idea.
Research says: Blue Crane (Anthropoides paradiseus)- which just so happens to be South Africa’s national bird!!
Soon we were hugging the coastline again and on our way to Cape Alguhas! Finally- the southern most tip of Africa and the place where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic Ocean. Got there, parked, walked up a little boardwalk, stood in a short line to get our picture taken. And….yeah. That was it. Hey, if I’m ever on Jeopardy and they ask where the southern most tip of Africa is, I can say “Cape Alguhas, South Africa!”.
Now it was time to drive back about an hour and a half to go to Panthera Africa- a big cat sanctuary. This sanctuary is a lot different than Cheetah Experience Ashia. They do not allow any breeding, as to insure not to increase the population of these cats in captivity (Ashia is breeding for a good reason- to increase genetic diversity). They do not allow any interaction with the animals- not even the workers go into the enclosures. And after you see just how big these cats are, who the hell would want to go in there anyway?! All of these cats are rescues from mainly two sources- individuals who had them as pets and breeding farms. Breeding farms for big cats are akin to puppy mills for dogs. The females are bred over and over and over again by removing their cubs from them within 2 weeks of birth. This causes the female to go into heat very quickly, vs the 2 years it would take if she was raising cubs. It also is a tremendous strain on their bodies, as they are not adapted to be bred like that. Those that are too old to breed anymore are often sold into the canned hunting trade- where someone purchases the cat, it is put into an enclosure, and the purchaser shoots it. If no one buys the animal, it is killed and its bones are ground up into powder for the Asian “traditional medicine” (read: traditional bullshit) market. Oy, humans. We suck. The kittens generally are sent out to be hand reared by volunteers who are told that the mothers rejected them and they’ll die without human intervention. This cats are then completely adapted to humans and are used in petting “zoo” type areas, until they get too old. Then, they go to a breeder farm. Two ladies were serving as volunteers, thinking they were helping these cats. When they found out the truth, they started a rescue facility, and have rescued back some of the kittens they had helped to raise. These animals are brought here to live out their lives as naturally as possible, being taken care of as well as possible. I was quite impressed by the facility and saddened by the true horror stories some of these cats have lived through.
Black leopard, who was about 1/2 the normal size due to inbreeding.
After we left Panthera, it was paved roads all the way home (for 3 hours!!). We had done 40 miles of dirt roads total, and our fillings and internal organs were feeling it! We stopped for gas and a healthy snack- hey, apple tea and carrot cupcake = one serving of fruit and one of vegetable, right? 🙂 After the long drive, we were both dead tired, but never too tired for porcupines!! We had made it back just in time for porcupine o’clock, and were thrilled to FINALLY get pictures of both Behati and Adam!! Happy, wild porcupines.
