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American Spirit II - Day 337; We Take a Full Day Tour to the Cape of Good Hope & a Penguin Colony; and then to Merlyn of Poole for Dinner; Tuesday, December 9, 2014



Up at 7:00 AM. My whole body is sore from sleeping on the lumpy and uneven sofa bed in the Holiday Inn Express hotel.



At 7:30 AM we go downstairs for our free breakfast, which consists of eggs, bacon, sausage, fruits, juices, pastry, toast, coffee, tea, etc.



Today we're taking a full day tour along the west coast of the peninsula down to the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point; and a Penguin colony near the Cape in Boulders National Park. Our van picks us up at 8:30 AM; Joel, Jeanine, Jack from Civetta II and myself; then we pick up the Folie a Deux crew, Tim, Tracey, Brian and Lucy at 8:45 AM; and finally we pick up Vlado at the Royal Cape Yacht Club at 8:50 AM.



The first spot we drive by is called Camps Bay, Cape Town's best beach. Surfing is big here and there's a lot kelp floating on the surface. A suburb of Cape Town, it boasts the areas most expensive homes. Visitors include Hollywood actors and actresses. Its a good place to own a home as the wind is blocked by where its located.



Our next stop was at Hout Bay. 'Hout' means timber. We spend 45 minutes there looking at small shops with tents set up along a parking lot; then on to Chapman's Peak.



We passed our first 'Shark Watch Post,' where a person sat high up on a cliff looking out for great white sharks swimming off the beaches. When he or she spots a shark, they signal life guards below and they get people out of the water until the danger's gone. One of three flags is flown: a black flag designating that the water is not clear; a green flag that the water is clear; and a red flag that a shark has been seen.



Next we drive thu the communities of Sun Valley and Sunnydale. Then we get to an area with baboons that are such a problem that people living in the area can't leave their windows or doors open because the baboons will enter the houses to take food. Like alligators in Florida, some people feed the baboons and this makes then unafraid of people, making them more adventuresome in contacting humans; and that as a result some of them have to be destroyed. Some baboons have become so aggressive that they even take food out of people's hands. In order to mitigate the baboon problem, the government hires Baboon Monitors or Rangers who sit in cars along 'baboon routes' and force them away by shooting at them with sling shots and paint balls.



As we're getting close to the Cape of Good Hope we see some Bontebok Antelopes along the road and some Ostrich, farm grown and wild.



When we enter the Cape of Good Hope and Table Mountain Park, the entry cost is 110 Rand or $9.53. We don't pay anything as its included in our tour. With our all day tour costing 760 Rand (about $66.00), that's impressive. The Park straddles False Bay, called 'false' because it was thought to be part of the Indian Ocean (false), therefore its name. Its part of the Atlantic Ocean.



The bushes and grasses here are called Fynbos; which only grows in this part of Africa and the world. Think Arizona sage brush on steroids. There are 1100 varieties of indigenous plants.



We stop by a sign in the park that says: Cape of Good Hope and the latitude and longitude of 18 degrees, 28 minutes and 26 seconds East and 34 degrees, 21 minutes and 25 seconds South. Situated at the junction of two of the earth's most contrasting water masses, the cold Benguela current on the west coast and the warm Agulhas current of the east coast; the Cape of Good Hope is popularly perceived as the meeting point of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Geographically, however, the Indian Ocean joins the Atlantic Ocean at Cape Aghulas to the east.



The cliffs at this southern point, which rise more than 200 meters above the ocean, consist of three distinct and clearly defined promontories - Cape of Good Hope, Cape Maclear and Cape Point.



At 12:30 PM we have lunch at an open air and heavily windowed restaurant in the park overlooking False Bay called appropriately, Two Oceans Restaurant. During lunch I see two whales on the surface a mile out. Not sure what type of whales. They look like floating logs. Lunch is over at 2:05 PM. We then drive to the lighthouse and took the 'funicular train' and then walked up the final steps to the top of the point. The last and only previous time that I was at the Cape of Good Hope was 10 years ago with Janet, my better half of 40 years. We were back in the van at 3:11 PM, drove by a dozen baboons 3 minutes later and then another 7, 3 minutes after that.



Our last stop of the day was just past Simon's Town at a community of Penguins in Boulders National Park. There we saw hundreds if not thousands of African Penguins, who migrated there from Antarctica in the 1980's. Many of the penguins were molting and some were sitting on visible eggs. One couple in a secluded area were even engaged in a behavior that will foster a family in the future.



On the way back to Cape Town we took a different, more direct route; passing by the community of Fish Hoek. A beach there had a Shark Watcher there also. In 2006 and 2010 two swimmers were killed there by great white sharks. The 2010 fatality was a person standing in the water along the beach. A shark net is put out every day and taken back in at night. Then we passed 'Seal Island.' I guess there are a few of those around as we visited an island called Seal Island in Mossel Bay, where we took our cage dive.



We passed what in America is called a golf course, but in South Africa a golf course is called a golf club.



At 5:30 PM we stopped by the Royal Cape Yacht Club to check on the status of the boat 'on the hard.' Then the Ramsey family and Jeanine were dropped off at the V & A Marina. Joel and I were back at our hotel by 6:00 PM.



At 6:50 PM we arrived at Merlyn of Poole for dinner; and were joined by the Ramsey's from Folie a Deux. The 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM cocktail hour was followed by a sumptuous dinner South African dinner of bobissee, cooked carrot and mashed potatoes. I know I spelled 'bobissee wrong, but I think at least its phonetics is close. A curried dish made with minced meat (hamburger) and an assortment of spices. Very, very tasty. Thank you Jenny. Dinner was followed by brownies and vanilla ice cream with chocolate or caramel topping.



We were back at the hotel around 10:00 PM, then to bed right away.



During our tour our guide, Zain, the same guide we had for the half day tour Saturday, talked about South Africa, answering some of the questions we pose about its history. The comments he made included the following:

That Nelson Mandela's famous 1990 speech, 'The Long Walk to Freedom,' was heard by 8,000 people standing around the city hall;

That Nelson Mandela spent 17 years as a prisoner on Redden Island in the bay just off Cape Town; 8 years in a high security prison on the mainland; and 2 years in a house on the grounds of a top security prison;

That Table Mountain was half sand stone and half granite, with granite on the top half;

That the first democratic elections where blacks voted occurred in 1994;

That the Western Cape Province, where Cape Town was located, was the most prosperous in South Africa;

That the life expectancy in the Western Cape Province was higher than in the other 8 Provinces;

That there was less unemployment in the Western Cape Province than in the other 8 Provinces;

That the national unemployment figure was 50% but that it was only 18% in the Western Cape Province;

That unemployment insurance is 1% of wages, paid by the employer;

That welfare is only for those that are disabled, and for children;

That when a person retires they get an 'old age pension,' like our Social Security;

That unskilled laborers are paid in cash, weekly; but that others are paid once per month;

That the 21st of the month for those that get paid monthly is pay day;

That 3 years ago a law was passed stating that paychecks now had to be direct deposited;

That townships were where the blacks were sent when whites bulldozed down their neighborhoods to give the land to whites;

That shanty towns were built up around the townships;

That after 1994 the government started giving the land taken illegally from the blacks back to the blacks;

That 'Colored', those of mixed white and black lineage, formed a coalition with whites so that they weren't subjugated like the black were during the apartheid years;

That drugs and gangs are a big problem in the townships, and that the biggest gang is called the 'Americans,' a gang not composed of any real Americans; and

That people we saw on our drive sitting on the curb in the medians and along the side of the road, were from other parts of Africa, in South Africa to find work.



Brian Fox


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