On our final full day in Africa we were up and on the road by 7am. Throughout the trip, we kept delaying places to see and things to do. “Tomorrow” we kept saying to ourselves. Well this time there was no tomorrow and we had a ridiculously full day of sightseeing ahead of us. Our first scheduled stop was Simons Town.
Simons Town is a little town on the west side of False Bay. It is quaint and beautiful, with amazing views of both cliffs and ocean. The real draw, however, is the penguins!
Kelsi was stunned when she heard I’d never seen a penguin in the wild before. Zoos yes, wandering around the beach sunning themselves, absolutely not!
“What?!” Said Kelsi “Penguins are almost like pests they’re so common in New Zealand”
“Yup, and I remember having a similar discussion about squirrels in Canada!” These penguins were my squirrels… As strange as that sentence sounds.
We paid our small fee to get into the park and walked down the boardwalk to the beach. I was elated.
“Look! Oh my god! There’s one!” I shouted. I got my camera out and started snapping photos of this lone penguin on a rock while Kelsi kept walking.
“Wait! There’s another!” More photos. Then finally I turned to where Kelsi was standing and saw a beach FULL of penguins. Hundreds of them! Old, young, sitting on eggs, swimming in the sea, waddling around in circles, and overall looking adorable.
“Shut up!” This was amazing.
I probably filled a half gig on my camera taking pictures and videos of these little tuxedo wearing balls of cuteness. The northern hemisphere is missing out! Except for the smell…
Yup, hundreds of penguins living on a beach created quite the stench! The novelty of the animals wore off quickly when the wind changed direction, so we wandered to a less populated beach to look around.
The second beach was beautiful. Very quiet, with shallow clear water and lots of rocks to climb around on. When we had finished jumping around on the rocks, we played the “how close can you get to a penguin without it snapping at you” game. Kelsi nearly got attacked a couple times by a curious little penguin, but the video was worth it!
When we’d finally had enough, we moved on to our next destination: Cape Point!