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| South African National flower Protea |
Cape Town has become a popular movie location. Due to its unique location Cape Town does not have natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes that many of us experience around the world, although it can get very windy as some of our pictures today clearly indicate. Table Mountain National Park is approximately 96 square kilometers. As we prepared to visit the Cape of Good Hope we meandered past an ostrich farm and even got some great photos of a wild ostrich. Ostrich egg will provide the equivalent of 24 chicken eggs worth of food.
Cape of Good Hope
The Cape of Good Hope is at the meeting point of two ocean currents, the cold Benguela from the west coast and the warm Agulhas on the east coast. It is not contrary to popular opinion the place where two oceans meet and is also not the southern most tip. The point at which the Atlantic and Pacific meet is actually at Cape Agulhas National Park. Whales are sometimes visible from the cape lookouts. Other species that might be seen include seals, humpback whales, Bryde's whales and dolphins. There are also many small animals that call this area home including rock hyrax AKA dassies, striped mice, water mongoose, and Cape clawless otter. lizards, snakes, tortoise, insects. Larger animals that call this area home include zebras, eland, and other varieties of antelope. This area is home to at least 250 species of birds.
The Cape of Good Hope is part of the Cape Floristic Kingdom with an amazing 100 species of indigenous plants.
Cape point
Our second stop for the day was at Cape Point. Cape Point is on the Cape of Good Hope within the Table Mountain National Park. This particular area is classified as a World Heritage Site due to being part of the Cape Floral Region
Baboons are given special protection. They feed on fruits, roots, honey, bulbs, insects and scorpions. During low tide they will sometimes feed on sand hoppers and shellfish. We were forewarned that the baboons are a dangerous nuisance on the site but that we would be fine as long as we made no effort to engage them. The baboons did not make an appearance during the meal but were very present on the way out. We saw one hopping from car to car and a family with two young baboons as we were leaving the area. There are marshals to keep the baboons form annoying people but the car one avoided being spotted by waiting until after the marshal was 20 or 30 feet off before hopping atop a vehicle. He then decided to pose for all the photogs in the group.Two Oceans Restaurant
Lunch today was at the Two Oceans Restaurant. The food was delicious although expediency was not the word of the day. Due to lunch taking an extended time we were unable to ride the funicular, cable car, up to the lighthouse. We were able to get some great photos of Table Mountain and the lighthouse from a path a few hundred feet away from the restaurant. The lighthouse was built in 1859 and is often the first point of call. It can be reached by jumping aboard athe flying dutchman funicular for a three minute ride.
Penguins
The Penguins live on Boulder Beach in Simon's Town and are a part of the Table Mountain National Park system. African Penguins moved from the vulnerable to endangered status in May 2010. In the 50 years between 1956 when the first penguin census was conducted and 2009 more than 80% of the breeding population of penguins were no longer left in the world. The penguins have been vulnerable to the harvesting of penguin eggs as a source of food, and guano scrapping. In 1983 the Boulders Penguin colony was established in order to bring support an increase in the penguin population. In the beginning of the development of the penguin colony there were only two pairs of breeding penguins. The penguin population has however grown to approximately 2200.We viewed the penguins from a landing docking although there was an offshoot from the path that allowed visitors to get really close for photo opportunitiesThere was a beach full of penguins. Baby penguins, adolescent penguins who were molting, mating penguins( who I might add chose not to use the lovely little plastic tunnels provided for breeding but mated openly:) ), and adults swimming in and out of the ocean.
- Penguins can swim an average of seven kilometers per hour and can stay submerged for up to two minutes.
- Penguins eat mainly squid and shoal fish such as anchovies and pilchards.
- Enemies of the penguins include sharks, Cape fur seals, and intermittently Orcas. Land based enemies include mongoose, genet, cats, dogs, and the kelp gulls who prey on the eggs and newborn chicks.
- Their tuxedo, formal wear is considered a camouflage. Animals in the water under them struggle to make out the white of the penguin belly. Animals outside of the water over them struggle with the black.
- Molting time is at its peak in December. During molting they are land bound for about 21 days because they lose their waterproofing.In preparation for the annual molt penguins fatten up before the molting season begins. They return from feeding after molting in January and begin nesting and mating from about February to August.
- While they are very cute penguins have sharp beaks if they bite or lunge at you.
- African penguins bray like donkeys.
- African penguins are social breeders and nest in colonies.
- Due to an inability to fly African penguins build nests in hollow scrapes in the open and even sometimes burrows in the sand. They are also willing and quick to use artificial structures.
- Full juvenile plumage occurs about sixty days after hatching at which point they are a bluish grey color. After a year or two they gain their distinctive formal wear.
- Penguins are monogamous and start breeding at approximately 4.
- Newborn chicks are covered in down which is not water proof.
- Youngsters alone will gather together in creches for protection.
Cape Town Photos
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