Cape Town 1: Cape Peninsula

Next morning we were picked up at MaCachette, and had a nice transfer to Lanseria airport. When we arrived there, we found out that we were at the wrong airport! Peet told us to book from Lanseria, since it is much easier to get there, than to O. Tambo International airport. So I booked 1TIME online, but apparently made a mistake (I doubt they made a mistake online, so I take the blame....). Well, 1TIME doesn't even fly from Lanseria, and a friendly guy from Kulula tried to help us, but their flights were full, and the last flight was bloody expensive. For a moment we considered renting a car and driving, but that would be brutal. So we decided to take a taxi to O. Tambo, and guess what! We even made it 10 minutes before check-in for our flight closed, and thus easily made the flight, haha!

Cheers, big ears!

I just love the good old MD82 - if you sit in the front
(we had row 7), it is incredibly quiet!
A very comfortable ride on ZS-TRF...

When we arrived in Cape Town we walked over to Thrifty, who - of course! - had the rental station furthest to the terminal. It was quite a bit of a walk. But picking up our car was easy, and we were on the way to town. We had booked the Ritz Hotel (well, not THAT Ritz...), and it was supposed to be easy to find. Also, we had Emily with us. Emily is my new toy - a tomtom! I downloaded the South Africa map and that should do us... Well, Emily refused to find a satellite and connect. What a disappointment! But the hotel was easy to find by common map as well, and so we were there quickly ('ish). We checked in and after a break we walked down to the waterfront. It was so stormy there that we decided to turn around and have dinner close to the hotel...

Next morning we got up, and a nice breakfast at the hotel and embarked on our trip to the Cape of Good Hope. Today, Emily decided that she wants to work, and that was just as well - she guided us all day without fail. Good girl! We started off towards Simon's Town. We had a beautiful view over the town, and sent Simon a text message from here...

Simon's Town

A bit further down the road we passed an ostrich farm:

And we finally reached the Table Mountain National Park. Ok, Table Mountain is quite a bit away, but it is still called the TMNP...

Neil and I bought a WILD Card in advance, since it was cheaper for us to buy the card (valid for one year), than paying the daily park fees here, and later at Krüger National Park...

Flower Power in the park (and a few creatures...):

Southern Rock Agama

Bontebok

Ostrich

Finally, we arrived at the Cape of Good Hope - the most south-western point of Africa!

While hiking up a small trail, we encountered quite a few Rock Dassies:

Rock Dassie (Rock Hyrax)

The lighthouse at Cape Point in the distance

Black-headed Heron

Chacma Baboon

catching a ride...

Hadada

Sacred Ibis

We then went on to Cape Point:

After a while at Cape Point, we made our way back north. At Boulders we stopped for the Penguin Colony.

African Penguin (Jackass Penguin)

I think this is a Slender Mongoose, but I am not entirely sure!

Suddenly there was some nervous noise going trough the colony, the penguins got tighter together, and all looked in one direction:

We quickly found out why:

Helmeted Guineafowl

I even got a great shot of a Great White!!!:

Well, I got it from an advertising board ;-)

When we were driving further north towards Simon's Town, we suddenly spotted some Southern Right Whales off shore. We stopped and spent quite some time watching them, while the daylight slowly faded...

Well, this was just another great day, with lots of wildlife, beautiful flora, and great landscapes...