Penguins, Wine and The Cape Of Good Hope!
Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Wed 1 Jan 2014 20:13
Not a new recipe, just too many photos for the server to
cope with! So photos of the penguin colony, our wine tasting and Cape of Good
Hope adventures are below.
The penguins beach! There are people
beaches either side and houses pretty close.
The colony is just 15-20 minutes walk down the road from
the marina. The main beach area and the bush behind it are all cordoned off so the penguins
have it to themselves. A
fenced boardwalk has been built through it so you can
get close without disturbing them. Peering down on them, they don't appear
to be bothered at all. They used to be known as Jackass
penguins as they sound remarkably like a donkey when they call out, but
their proper name is South African penguins.
How many do you reckon then? While quite a
lot are standing still, just as many are not
and it's quite difficult to count
them.
Groups took turns to go for a swim.
They didn't appear to be going out to feed, but just
to
keep cool and for the enjoyment of it, often
surfing in on the waves.
That's it - your turn! The next batch comes
in on a wave and waddles up the beach.
They happily come up to and waddle under the
boardwalk, so ............
.............. close-ups are not difficult
to get!
A sculpture outside the Tokara winery. The
leaves are actually letters of the alphabet.
The wine growing area around Stellenbosch is in the mountain
valleys. Unfortunately the only rain we've had since arriving in Simon's Town
was on the day of the tour and the mountains were all covered in cloud. It did
look dramatic, but it was not good for photos. The rain did
stop after midday and the sun did eventually come out, which was good as
the late lunch was planned as a picnic!
The wine tasters around the board
table! The tapestry on the wall was
impressive.
It was made by an Egyptian and depicts the
wine-making process.
Wines in the temperature-controlled
cellars.
The guys and
...............
............ girls. No, they didn't allow us
to take the big bottle away with us!
Another winery, Boschendal, in a
beautiful setting, leading to .............
.................. this lovingly maintained
Dutch building.
The mountains begin to clear. The
construction on the lawn is one of the sculptures in
the grounds
of the
winery.
Eucalyptus flowering in the grounds.
Salmon-pink is quite unusual.
Just a 30 minute drive south of Simon's
Town takes you to the end of the Cape Peninsula. This has
two main promontories sticking out into the Atlantic, Cape Point and
the Cape of Good Hope. The latter is the one that everyone knows about, but
the highest of the two by some way is Cape Point and from a
navigational point of view it's the important one as that's where the lighthouse
is. The Cape of Good Hope gained it's importance as once past it, ships
heading east would be able to turn and start heading more east than
south. We drove down to see both a week or so before Christmas. (We're sharing a
hire car with 2 other boats here.) As said before, the Cape of Good Hope is not
the most southern point of Africa, Cape Agulhas
is.
Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope are at
virtually the same latitude, but Cape
Point is just over a mile further
east.
A long climb up to see the old
lighthouse on the top of Cape Point. It looks worse than
it was.
Looking out from the old lighthouse to
the newer one on the end of the cliffs and quite
a bit lower down. They found that the old
lighthouse on top (249 metres above sea level)
was often covered by
cloud and after a liner was
wrecked in 1911 they built the
current lighthouse which is
only 87 metres above sea level.
Looking down on the Cape of Good Hope (the
furthest promontory) from Cape Point.
The shapes in the centre are paths to go
down to get different views along the cliffs
and out to sea.
A close up of the Cape of Good
Hope.
Looking back north - the Atlantic Ocean to
the left and False Bay to the right.
The obligatory photo! Standing at the
base of the Cape of Good Hope.
More stairs! Starting the climb to
the top of the Cape of Good Hope.
The wooden stairs have run out and
steps have been cut into the rock.
The summit of the Cape of Good
Hope!
Looking up to Cape Point from the Cape of
Good Hope.
A potential Christmas Dinner - one would
easily replace 4 turkeys! A pair of wild Ostriches
with 3 chicks roamed not far from the
Cape of Good Hope.
They were right on the waters edge and were
not bothered at all by cars stopping to
take photos. There were a lot of signs
saying beware of the baboons that also run wild
in this area, but we didn't see
any.
|