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...