The Cape Peninsula
written 10/16/07
I traveled around the Cape Peninsula with both the tour and the volunteer agency. What follows is a combination of those days:
SEALS
We visited Duiker Island—on a “Warren Marine” vessel, mind you—to see the large Cape Fur Seal colony. I can’t tell you exactly how many seals were there (I can’t estimate to save my life, and the population can fluctuate from 600 to 5,000). Let’s just say: a lot.
I was torn between watching their big blubbery bodies laboriously fight for each inch of movement on land, or watching their sleek, torpedo-shaped bodies zoom effortlessly through the water surrounding the island.
And gee, isn’t it so cute when seals swim upside-down with their bellies up and flippers flapping above water? I don’t want to spoil the cute-factor of this for you, but I learned why seals do this: their blood vessels are concentrated in their flipper ends so in order to get heat to their bodies, they hold their flippers out of the water. Interesting.
Later we went to a viewpoint across the harbor, and I photograph Duiker Island from afar (right).
PENGUINS: We also visited the penguin colony at Boulders Beach.
Yes, to answer your collective question: penguins are endemic to Africa. Here’s the information board at the entrance proving it (plus some other interesting stuff, if you can read text that small).
I decided not to work with penguins at SANCCOB after all. The penguins are jackasses. (Sound harsh? Didn’t look carefully enough at the above picture, did you? I’m not doing this blog for my health people. j/k)
Really though, did I forget to mention that I canceled my volunteering placement with the penguins. Hmmm… well I did. After not enjoying the monkey experience, I decided six weeks with penguins would probably produce the same result. So, instead of working with penguins I am going to work on a sustainable development project in a rural area of Eastern Cape (just a short 20 HOUR bus ride away.) More on that new job later…
Anyway, the visit with the penguins was fun. They are so hilarious. I visited the colony twice and loved it both times. Well, I loved it aside from the constant pbst pbst pbst of trying to keep the free-floating penguin feathers out of my mouth. The little dudes were molting and the air was full of bitty feathers (especially the second visit, when it wasn’t drizzly.)
I was lucky enough to catch a performance of sorts—a rather shrill Penguin Idol was underway in the middle of the beach. A number of penguin fans had gathered in a circle around the performers. One penguin would shriek non-stop for a minute or so. Then, a moment of silence followed by shrieks from the opposing penguins, a duo this time. Then silence. Then repeat, repeat. Not sure who won. I got bored.
So, uh…after my visits I’m even more convinced that penguins are up to something. What are they planning?
WHALES
We saw A LOT of whales. Really, there was a glut of whales on both days, and they were in no hurry to get anywhere. They rolled around, bobbed up and down, made cool noises. I’d say we had 12-15 separate whale sightings—close ones, right near the shore, and often in groups of three or four.
And now I must make a correction: that wasn’t an Orca I saw at Haga Haga. The whales that are common around the tip of Africa about this time of year are Southern Right Whales. I was confused by the irregular white patches common on the bellies of Southern Right Whales. (They are so named because they are the ‘right’—or correct—ones for whale hunting.)
I have no pictures to show you because I know better than to try to photograph a whale. It’s virtually impossible to capture anything interesting, and anyway, I had some communing to do.
CAPE POINT
We also visited the Cape Point Natural Reserve, home of the da-da-da-dum… Cape of Good Hope. Ah, that place on the map I’ve stared at countless times.
It’s not really the southernmost tip of Africa like most people think, but it’s the southwestern most. That’s not nothin’.
When I was there with the tour group, we went on a really great hike up to the top of the Cape of Good Hope rocky outcrop (which probably has some more official sounding name than that), then along the rocky cliffs.
En route, we saw whales, flowers, and two faunal surprises: coastal ostriches and GIANT rats. Who knew ostriches live along the coast?
And bona-fide Rodents Of Unusual Size. I didn’t fight them though. These are the tame Cape ROUSes, sister species to ferocious Fire Swamp ROUSes.
After our hike, we enjoyed a delicious lunch at the cliff-top restaurant. We were all giddy at how great the food was! And the ‘entertainment’ was good too—entertainment in the form of crafty baboons and birds. Every five minutes or so, you’d hear screams and look over to see an aggressive bird swooping in for a piece of pizza or a large (!) baboon running along the fence and grabbing at tables for scraps of someone’s lunch. At one point, a bird flew THREE INCHES FROM MY NOSE to grab the french fry en route to my mouth. It was shocking (yes, I did scream) but alas…no fry for birdy. Now who’s the crafty one, huh? huh?
Then, when I was there with Aviva (the volunteer agency), it seemed we couldn’t turn a corner without seeing baboons. Before I came to Africa, I’d imagined baboon sightings to be extremely rare, something that required long treks in jungles and wise old men trained in tracking the might beasts. Nope, there’s a ton of them here in South Africa, hangin by the road, grooming each other (just like me and Skunky!), waiting for some schmuck to open their car window so they can snatch something from inside.
In the picture on the left, that’s the car door in the bottom corner, which I left in to show that I hadn’t zoomed in for that shot. We really got that close (windows closed, of course).
Our favorites were the babies of course. So spunky, so like human kids!
SO THAT'S ABOUT IT…
That about captures the peninsula tours. Right now I’m sitting in a café near my house—“Obz Café”—writing this entry. The cute couple next to me is planning their ‘special day’ with a wedding planner. Gee, I’m so happy for them.
Tomorrow I go to a hotel, somewhere. I don’t know where, really. The volunteer coordinator recommended it and arranged it for me, including transport there and back. She’s great! I’m going there in order to have some time alone for the anniversary of the crash, which is this Thursday.
I return to the house on Thursday evening and start at the children’s home on Friday. (Today was the training.)
I traveled around the Cape Peninsula with both the tour and the volunteer agency. What follows is a combination of those days:
SEALS
We visited Duiker Island—on a “Warren Marine” vessel, mind you—to see the large Cape Fur Seal colony. I can’t tell you exactly how many seals were there (I can’t estimate to save my life, and the population can fluctuate from 600 to 5,000). Let’s just say: a lot.
I was torn between watching their big blubbery bodies laboriously fight for each inch of movement on land, or watching their sleek, torpedo-shaped bodies zoom effortlessly through the water surrounding the island.
And gee, isn’t it so cute when seals swim upside-down with their bellies up and flippers flapping above water? I don’t want to spoil the cute-factor of this for you, but I learned why seals do this: their blood vessels are concentrated in their flipper ends so in order to get heat to their bodies, they hold their flippers out of the water. Interesting.Later we went to a viewpoint across the harbor, and I photograph Duiker Island from afar (right).
PENGUINS: We also visited the penguin colony at Boulders Beach.
Yes, to answer your collective question: penguins are endemic to Africa. Here’s the information board at the entrance proving it (plus some other interesting stuff, if you can read text that small).
I decided not to work with penguins at SANCCOB after all. The penguins are jackasses. (Sound harsh? Didn’t look carefully enough at the above picture, did you? I’m not doing this blog for my health people. j/k)Really though, did I forget to mention that I canceled my volunteering placement with the penguins. Hmmm… well I did. After not enjoying the monkey experience, I decided six weeks with penguins would probably produce the same result. So, instead of working with penguins I am going to work on a sustainable development project in a rural area of Eastern Cape (just a short 20 HOUR bus ride away.) More on that new job later…
Anyway, the visit with the penguins was fun. They are so hilarious. I visited the colony twice and loved it both times. Well, I loved it aside from the constant pbst pbst pbst of trying to keep the free-floating penguin feathers out of my mouth. The little dudes were molting and the air was full of bitty feathers (especially the second visit, when it wasn’t drizzly.)I was lucky enough to catch a performance of sorts—a rather shrill Penguin Idol was underway in the middle of the beach. A number of penguin fans had gathered in a circle around the performers. One penguin would shriek non-stop for a minute or so. Then, a moment of silence followed by shrieks from the opposing penguins, a duo this time. Then silence. Then repeat, repeat. Not sure who won. I got bored.
So, uh…after my visits I’m even more convinced that penguins are up to something. What are they planning? WHALES
We saw A LOT of whales. Really, there was a glut of whales on both days, and they were in no hurry to get anywhere. They rolled around, bobbed up and down, made cool noises. I’d say we had 12-15 separate whale sightings—close ones, right near the shore, and often in groups of three or four.
And now I must make a correction: that wasn’t an Orca I saw at Haga Haga. The whales that are common around the tip of Africa about this time of year are Southern Right Whales. I was confused by the irregular white patches common on the bellies of Southern Right Whales. (They are so named because they are the ‘right’—or correct—ones for whale hunting.)
I have no pictures to show you because I know better than to try to photograph a whale. It’s virtually impossible to capture anything interesting, and anyway, I had some communing to do.
CAPE POINT
We also visited the Cape Point Natural Reserve, home of the da-da-da-dum… Cape of Good Hope. Ah, that place on the map I’ve stared at countless times.
It’s not really the southernmost tip of Africa like most people think, but it’s the southwestern most. That’s not nothin’.
When I was there with the tour group, we went on a really great hike up to the top of the Cape of Good Hope rocky outcrop (which probably has some more official sounding name than that), then along the rocky cliffs.
En route, we saw whales, flowers, and two faunal surprises: coastal ostriches and GIANT rats. Who knew ostriches live along the coast?
And bona-fide Rodents Of Unusual Size. I didn’t fight them though. These are the tame Cape ROUSes, sister species to ferocious Fire Swamp ROUSes.
After our hike, we enjoyed a delicious lunch at the cliff-top restaurant. We were all giddy at how great the food was! And the ‘entertainment’ was good too—entertainment in the form of crafty baboons and birds. Every five minutes or so, you’d hear screams and look over to see an aggressive bird swooping in for a piece of pizza or a large (!) baboon running along the fence and grabbing at tables for scraps of someone’s lunch. At one point, a bird flew THREE INCHES FROM MY NOSE to grab the french fry en route to my mouth. It was shocking (yes, I did scream) but alas…no fry for birdy. Now who’s the crafty one, huh? huh? Then, when I was there with Aviva (the volunteer agency), it seemed we couldn’t turn a corner without seeing baboons. Before I came to Africa, I’d imagined baboon sightings to be extremely rare, something that required long treks in jungles and wise old men trained in tracking the might beasts. Nope, there’s a ton of them here in South Africa, hangin by the road, grooming each other (just like me and Skunky!), waiting for some schmuck to open their car window so they can snatch something from inside. In the picture on the left, that’s the car door in the bottom corner, which I left in to show that I hadn’t zoomed in for that shot. We really got that close (windows closed, of course).
Our favorites were the babies of course. So spunky, so like human kids! 
SO THAT'S ABOUT IT…
That about captures the peninsula tours. Right now I’m sitting in a café near my house—“Obz Café”—writing this entry. The cute couple next to me is planning their ‘special day’ with a wedding planner. Gee, I’m so happy for them.
Tomorrow I go to a hotel, somewhere. I don’t know where, really. The volunteer coordinator recommended it and arranged it for me, including transport there and back. She’s great! I’m going there in order to have some time alone for the anniversary of the crash, which is this Thursday.
I return to the house on Thursday evening and start at the children’s home on Friday. (Today was the training.)
