Cruising Along the Coast of Cape Town, South Africa

       

Today we drove along the coast of Cape Town, South Africa and saw penguins, Hout Bay, and the Cape of Good Hope.

We learned many interesting facts about Cape Town’s history from our amazing guide, Gavin. The history of the development of Cape Town is long. First, in 1488, the Portuguese discovered Cape Town but didn’t colonize it. Then, (can you believe it?) the Dutch came and colonized Cape Town in 1152. In 1806, the Boer War started between the Dutch and the British. Looks like the British won because in 1820, the British started to settle in Cape Town.

Apartheid is a concept often heard about in South Africa.  In apartheid, 10% of the rich white people controlled and led 90% of the underprivileged black and minority people. For South Africa, apartheid was when the white people had an unbalanced and privileged power over the blacks. Seems pretty silly and unfair to me.

Next, we got see penguins and they were so cute! I had no idea I was going to see penguins in Africa. I thought I’d have to wait until Antarctica. We learned many interesting facts about them. African penguins are also called Jack Ass penguins because they can make a sound like a donkey. Jack Ass penguins mate for life, they also molt (molt means when a penguin sheds his/her baby feathers) once a year.

Some of the penguins are called ‘hardcore penguins’ because they are fearless and don’t hide from the water or wind. They allow themselves to be open to natural elements of their environment. We made up a name for the other penguins and called them ‘scaredy penguins’ because it seemed like they were too scared so they lived in a more protective environment.

Did you know that you can tell the difference between a male penguin and a female penguin by the size of their beak? Men’s beaks are bigger than female’s. Kinda like my momma and pappa. Did you also know that the force of a penguin’s bite can break a human’s finger?

Baby penguins have a crazy way to get fed. The Dads go out to catch and eat fish then they regurgitate it back up for the mothers…but that’s not even the worst part. After the food has been regurgitated once by the Dad, it gets regurgitated up TWICE, now by the mom then finally to the baby. Blah!

Did you know that the bay called the False Bay has the most sharks in the WORLD? Scary!

Then, two last things you should know are that the Cape of Good Hope is where two oceans collide—the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans – and that the Cape of Good Hope is at the Southwestern most point in Africa!

The day was really great but most of all because Nania and Bobba were there with us!