Vast Differences and Penguins

While there were several big reasons for us to visit Cape Town, one of the biggest pulls was to get to see the penguins, Jessica‘s most favorite animal. While they do not live exactly in Cape Town, there are two colonies within a couple hours drive from here. We looked into booking a day tour, but we were worried that we would not get to be in control of the time and that we may feel rushed. With some research, it appeared that driving in Cape Town would be fairly similar to the driving we do at home, albeit on the other side of the road, so we decided to rent a car for the day.

There were car rental places within a couple blocks of where we are staying, so that part of the process was fairly simple. While I have often been the one to drive on our travels due to the cars being manual, Jessica volunteered to drive our car for the day, and she did an incredible job!

We had one slight detour, getting out of town, but generally, we got to Betty’s Bay without a glitch. During the hour and a half drive there, much of it was on a large highway similar to our interstate system. Once we got off the motorway, we drove through a very wealthy area. It was full of golf courses, grand gated estates, wide sidewalks, decorated lawns, and huge houses with views of the ocean beyond. The last 15 miles or so were on a two lane curvy road on the edge of the ocean, similar to highway one in California. There were rocky hillsides directly to our left and ocean vistas with signs to look for whales just to our right. Baboons blocked our progress only once, but construction crews blocked it many more times. Apparently, as winter is the low travel season, it must also be the season that roadwork is completed.

Betty’s Bay is a lovely little community full of moderate-sized vacation homes and retirees complete with a pickle-ball club. Many people come here to see the penguins, so there were lots of fabulous signs along the way. However, as we got close, our GPS and the signs had differing opinions on which way we should go. We were a little bit lost, when we saw, at a gateway to a parking lot, two little penguins, welcoming us, and showing us the way to go.

African penguins used to be called jackass penguins, not because of their personalities, but because of the sound that they make. It is incredibly reminiscent of a donkey! They stand about 2 feet tall and weigh around 10 pounds. So, yes, they are about as adorable as they come! Watching them waddle about was simply adorable. As these creatures are endangered, the communities that host them have fully embraced them. Their nests can often be found in peoples’ yards, but there is a nature reserve complete with a boardwalk where people can walk along and view their nests and homes without disturbing them. In fact, the communities have provided fiberglass burrows to support them. At Betty’s Bay, there were incredibly few people, but even then, the penguins didn’t act like they were bothered by us at all, although, they did hide their babies from us anytime we spotted them. 

Dassies, adorable mounds of brown fur in the ground hog family also dotted the coastlines amongst the rocks. They seemed to live in harmony, not really bothering one another.

Then, we set off to see Simon’s Town, another community where penguins live. Our route had us turn off the motorway and head south, but in a vastly different area than where we had been before. Cape Town is home to about five million people, but less than half a million people leave in the downtown area. Our guide the other night had explained that the median income for people living here is pretty low, and the cheapest apartments in the city were more than the median income, so most of the millions of people lived outside of the city. He had described their living arrangements that sounded impossible next to all this wealth we had just seen. After turning off the motorway this time, we discovered that while the living conditions were impossible, millions of people are living that way here. Living structures were created from scrap metal on top of dirt and were about ten feet by ten feet wide practically on top of one another with satellite dishes and power lines squeezing in amongst them. There were not just a few of them, but like the endless plains of the Serengeti, these homes stretched on as far as the eye could see. Roads were blocked, once by police cars and once by a purposefully set fire in the road, so we were in this area for much longer than intended. I did not feel unsafe, but I felt incredibly uncomfortable. Jess did a beautiful job and got us out of there safely, and we got back on the motorway and were able to take a different path. I’m sorry for the circumstances that led us there, but seeing it also was a good reminder, especially after the incredible wealth we had driven through earlier in the day.

Simon’s Town is a much more popular spot to view the penguins. This is partly because its proximity to Cape Town as well as its popularity after the recent Netflix documentary, Penguin Town. As such, it is much more curated for visitors with some shops and restaurants selling themed items as well as a very nice visitor center. While there were also fiberglass burrows in places here, many of the Penguins were kind enough to build their nests right along the beach in a large colony so that we had great viewing of their babies. The babies grow quickly, but it takes a while for their feathers to become waterproof and look like the adults. As such, we got to see babies of different sizes and shapes in all different stages of growing up. We got to watch as their waddle, or group of penguins on land, became a raft, a group of penguins in the water and vice versa, watching them go from awkward walks into expert swimmers.

As part of our drive, we also decided to enter the national park and were a bit pressed for time, so we did not get to go on any hikes nor enjoy much there, but we got to see a few ostriches and the beautiful rugged land on our way to the most southwesterly point of the continent. The Cape of Good Hope stands here where the Indian ocean and the Atlantic ocean meet. The water is stunningly blue, seals rested on large boulders, and rocky hills seem to drop directly into the ocean.

Leaving there, we knew we were pressed for time, but it wasn’t until I plugged in the rental car address that I realized just how pressed we were. Our car rental was due back at 6 PM. Yes, we had another viable option, but for the sake of the story, let’s say we did not. Our navigation system said that we would be arriving back at the car rental address at 5:53 PM. We were incredibly careful not to take any wrong turns on our way back, and Jess navigated so beautifully, that we pulled in at 5:56 and didn’t have to deal with option number two.

It was an eye-opening day, and well worth the drive for so many reasons!