Day 2 started off with a quick coffee and breakfast at the coffee shop right below our apartment. This would become our go to breakfast stop the rest of the trip and became a running joke between Tim and the waiter. Grant decided to be adventurous and try a Red Cappuccino which turned out to be a type of tea with foamed milk. Grant didn’t really hear the waiter when he described the drink so wasn’t sure exactly what he was trying. He said it wasn’t bad, but when you’re expecting a coffee-like drink and get tea, it’s not exactly the way you want to start your morning. Though his bagel sandwich was delicious and ended up making up for it. 

We decided since Tim was coming off a long journey and was time adjusting, we would take the easy route for the day and enjoy the road trip up the coast to Cape of Good Hope. The journey up the coast was beautiful with rising mountains to the right of us and a large bay to the left. Just less than an hour up the road from our Airbnb was Boulder’s Beach with one of the largest colonies of African penguins. So of course we had to make a stop! We walked down to the beach to find a small colony of penguins atop a rock that had been marked off to ensure tourists did not disturb them. After all I had been reading, I was a little disappointed at first that this small group was all we had seen so I knew there had to be a different spot farther north along the beach. We saw several people up on a walkway ahead and knew we had to be close to the colony. But as we realized during our past few weeks in Africa, they know how to capitalize on tourism. After paying our entry fee, we stepped out on the walkway and enjoyed walking along the path seeing the penguins laying down, walking, hiding in their burrows, or cleaning each others wings. One difference from our time seeing penguins in Ushuaia was getting to see newborn chicks with their mothers! It was so cute to see and they couldn’t have been more than a few weeks old! Just as was the case in Argentina, I probably took about 100 penguin photos in our time watching them!

After spending time with the penguins, we walked along the trail outside the reserve and saw more penguins along with some creatures called dassies (we think pronounced “dussies” – see pictures below). We grabbed a quick bite of ice cream before it was back on the road towards Cape of Good Hope.

When we got to the entrance of the park, we again didn’t realize we would have to pay another entry fee to enjoy the view of Cape Point. But it was worth it once we finally got there. We had a short hike to the top of the first lighthouse and had a beautiful view of the ocean along with the Cape of Good Hope. We realized after reading a couple of signs along the trail that the Cape of Good Hope is the most southwestern point of Africa (not the most southern point as Tim had thought). We weren’t too concerned as we had already been as far south as you can go besides Antarctica when we were in Ushuaia. Though we kept joking about the signs that noted we were in the most southwestern part of the African continent.  

We took a few pictures at the top before heading down another trail to take a look at the first lighthouse that had been erected at the cape. There was a section of water just east of the lighthouse that caused several shipwrecks and in the misty/rainy weather, ships had a hard time viewing the lighthouse so they had to move it a couple hundred meters higher. The same sign also taught us that the air at Cape Point is consider the “cleanest in Africa” is it originates from the southern ocean and disperses smog – known as “The Cape Doctor” locally. Our drive back to Cape Town, we took the scenic route back through the toll road and the famous Chapman’s Peak. It was a stunning drive again with the bright blue waters of the ocean to the left and ever changing landscape to the right. We passed through a couple of beach towns that had houses you might see in Malibu and before we knew it we were back at Sea Point. 

We headed off to V&A Waterfront to grab dinner (and of course had to find a place with a not so long wait as we didn’t have a reservation anywhere). We took the long route along the beach which added about 10-15 minutes to the walk, but got to see part of the course/finish line area for the Formula E race they had coming up on Saturday. (It was the first time the country was hosting this race and traffic near the end of the week was a nightmare). We grabbed a nice dinner as we figured out our activities we wanted to do for the next few days in Cape Town. We walked home and had a funny fiasco at a Gelato store when Tim tried to order a waffle cone and Grant said “+1” and they made two waffles to put ice cream on top instead of putting scoops on waffle cones. I was first to realize they might be making waffles but when we spoke up they’d already made one waffle and so the employees put their scoops on waffle cones and then gave us a waffle since they felt bad the waffle cones were cheaper than orders of waffles. It goes without saying all desserts given to us were finished!

Random Tidbits

• Traffic lights are called robots
• They have zigzag lines in the road to inform drivers of upcoming pedestrian crosswalks
• Load shedding (most recent year it got up to almost 12 hrs of power outages/day)