South Africa trip Part 3

The third and final post on our South Africa trip involved sightseeing around Cape Peninsula. Mountains, penguins, ostrich, spectacular ocean views, and I've included some of the animal sightings on safari that weren't in the first post. The above photo was taken on safari by our tour director George, of our whole group including guides, right before the sky opened up with a wild thunder and lightening rain storm. We had to abandon our lovely pre-dinner cocktail/appetizer spread and race back down the rain slicked rocks in our safari open land cruisers. We all survived unscathed, but thoroughly soaked to the skin. You'll notice one guide has a gun - they all had them on every game drive. It's for protection as you never know what animals might be on the attack. Truly primal wildness.

Lion's Head Mountain

View of Cape Town

We road up to the top of Table Mt. which is an enormous flat plateau 

Table Mountain with a forest fire 

Absolutely spectacular scenery at one of the oldest mountains in the world - Table Mountain. which is 240 million years old. It is 3563ft above sea level at the top, which didn't sound very high to us, as we're used to 12, 13, 14,000 ft peaks but this is straight up vertical, looks and feels very high. Hiking is popular here along with numerous serious hiking accidents. It is a lot more dangerous than it looks. We rode up the cable car instead. - a fast five minute ride up. The day after our group went up the mountain was closed due to a forest fire. They are common and normal procedure is to let them burn out - which it did in a couple days while we were still there. Very different than U.S. procedure.

Gorgeous beaches and views of the ocean on our visit to the Cape Peninsula. Lots of animals are around including zebra, eland, ostrich, penguins, and baboons. Some of our group saw baboons on our way to the cable car that goes to the top of Cape Pt. They are famous for jumping into cars searching for food if they see a way in (even with people in them). I did not need a close encounter of that kind.

The endangered African Penguins at Boulder Beach. They are protected here and the fight continues to have the species survive. Fuel spills, over fishing and climate change have been deadly to these flightless charming creatures.

local art for sale wherever we stopped.

The beach and penguins are a major draw to locals and tourists alike. These dancing school kids were raising money for school projects in the parking lot. The closeup shows what their noisemakers were made of - soda can tops! Enterprising...

A rare sighting of African wild dogs on our safari. They are endangered and found in only four places in Africa. They live and hunt in packs and only the alpha male and female are allowed to mate. That alone means small reproduction numbers. Other reasons for endangerment include habitat loss, conflict with humans protecting livestock, snares from poachers, and infectious disease.

Wildebeest

Kudu - male and female above

nope - it's an African Fish Eagle not a Bald Eagle

Weaver bird (weaves it's nest)

African Starling

Brown headed parrot

Eagle owl (largest owl in the world)

Guineafowl

Enormous nest above our safari lodge suite - never found out what was in it.

The number of bird species is endless in the area. I needed a whole other safari just on birds to get a handle on all that is there. Hey, there's an idea - another safari!

Lazarus our guide at an early morning coffee safari stop

This is the final post on the trip. Scroll down for parts one and two. There you have it - an amazing lifetime experience. We absolutely loved every minute of it. It stole my heart and I took part of South Africa deep into my soul. Hope we'll go again some day...

South Africa Trip Part 2 - Cape Town, wine country, and golf

Our South Africa itinerary involved many locations, 6 rounds of golf, wine country tour, Cape Peninsula area tour, and ended with a 4 day safari. South Africa is its own country with 60 million people, and while it's a tiny part of the whole African continent, it's still BIG - 1/4 the size of the U.S. The rest of the African continent (the second largest in the world) is made up of many territories and countries and is enormous -large enough to fit the U.S., China, India, and most of Europe. All things I learned in school but forgot...

Simola

Simola

Simola

The Links

The Links - owner's house not the clubhouse - billionaire Hasso Plattner

We stayed at the Fancourt Hotel, a luxury resort in the heart of the Garden Route near the Outeniqua Mts. It was really lovely with beautiful suites, great food and has three golf courses, including The Links which is the number one rated course in South Africa and 28th in the world. Our group played two of them: Outeniqua and The Links, and a third course, Simola, a distance away.

Next up was a flight to Cape Town to stay at the Table Bay Hotel on the Victoria and Alfred waterfront. Another lovely hotel, this one with stately old world charm offering high tea every afternoon. Over the top breakfast buffet and the same wonderful service that we found everywhere. Our room had a beautiful patio looking out over the waterfront with a view of Table mountain. It also overlooked the very active seal community below our room. They were a noisy bunch even in the night. This was our home for 5 nights as Cape Town was the base for our sightseeing tours and two more rounds of golf. Great dining and shopping within walking distance that was very safe.

It is only fair to include some of the harsher aspects of life in the major cities such as Cape Town or Johannesburg. There is extreme poverty, homelessness, and crime outside the protected areas we traveled in. From our travel bus we viewed these unregulated corrugated iron shack towns outside Cape Town. These shanty communities of hundreds of thousands of people started during apartheid and continued to grow. Current government has given up trying to tear them down and move the people as there is nowhere for them to go - instead they brought in electricity and you can see the mass amount of satellite dishes. These are the "lucky" ones...  We as the privileged tourists were kept quite safe with only lovely destinations and hotels to enjoy. If you paid attention though, there were electrified fences with razor wire literally everywhere we went, including the golf courses. It is the ultimate juxtaposition. 

The ladies on the trip minus one (Judy took the night off)

We were treated to an amazing dinner experience at the Gold restaurant where you have an immersive experience with drumming, song, and dance along a set 15 course dinner. Yup, you read that correctly. We at least tried every single course too.

The national flower - Protea

Comes in many colors 

Two more rounds of golf in a spectacular area in the Western Cape and Winelands. Pearl Valley and Erinvale. A lot of people buy second homes or retire here. It was eye opening to see how beautiful this part of South Africa is.

local school out for lunch break

A wine tour day gave us a nice feel for the expansive Winelands area. After being relatively unknown South African wine is making a larger name for itself these days and we've become new fans. Only certain wineries distribute to the U.S. though and even then it's limited. They are known for their cabs, chardonnays, red blends, and pinotage, one of our new favorites  - their signature grape developed in 1925  - a cross between Pinot noir and Cinsaut. Visited nearby Stellenbosch, South Africa's second oldest town  with Dutch origins for some shopping. It is a gorgeous university town with cute cafes, art galleries etc. My only complaint is we didn't have enough time here given our packed schedule. The dollar is very strong against their rand so everything looked to be a great bargain. We did buy some things do not worry...

Our last and 6th golf day was actually in the middle of the safari trip as Leopard Creek (number 2 ranked in South Africa) is bordered by Kruger National Park. Talk about security - the front gates were wildly intimidating. Large wild animals can and do traipse across fairways on a regular basis. We saw monkeys and baboons (who were waiting to pounce on your belongings in your cart the second your back was turned), crocodiles, and heard roaring hippos, and a personal favorite - a dung beetle rolling dung across a fairway. They eat it by the way. Ok yuck.  I knew about this from years ago in National Geo. Never expected to see one...

Not done with this trip yet! Another post coming soon - two and a half weeks covers a lot of territory.