Cape Esperance / Cape of Good Hope or Cabo dos Tormentas / Cape of Storms

LEON:  This has been a good day.  We both slept in until 1000.  That’s the last day of indulging ourselves.  By Sunday we will be living on the tour schedule, and they have a timetable to keep.  Right now, we don’t have one, but we have to finish adjusting to this time zone.  They say that the average person can only adjust their internal (circadian) clock about one time zone per day.  By that rule of thumb, I am trapped out over the Atlantic ocean, somewhere near the equator.  Soon I will be in St Helena, where Napoleon spent his final exile.  But that still leaves many time zones to go.  And that means that poor Barb, who doesn’t know enough to know that she should be jet-lagged, will continue to have to endure her Grumpy mate. 

Yesterday, we rented a car with the intention of driving to the wine country.  But we slept in!  So, instead, we decided to drive down to do the Cape and Peninsula tour.  Like everything else one does, it ended up taking much longer than we expected.  And there was often excitement provided by the GPS and the maps not agreeing.  But the most excitement and thrills and laughter was provided by none other than that highly skilled test pilot, Barb’s husband.  Flying airplanes is proving to be much easier than driving well on the wrong side of the road.  Of course, it’s not me on the wrong side of the road.  It’s the rest of the drivers on these South African roads.  The only country I ever seen whose drivers were more insistent than these were in England.  So, despite my efforts, all of the other drivers keep herding me to the opposite side than I want to be on.  The steering wheel and the gear shift patterns are all wrong.  But that seems to work out.  I tried to signal many cars today that I intended to turn.  But somehow they did not recognize my windshield wipers on high as a valid signal.  I blinked my bright beams at someone to say I saw them, but shortly afterwards all forward visibility was obscured by the windshield washer water.  My co-pilot is alternately convulsed with laughter or gasping in fear.  Her timely gasps have saved us several times.

We saw some surprising things today.  And they weren’t all oceanographic or geological.  I was here in South Africa in the 80’s.  At the game farm that our crew visited that trip, we were privileged to watch some tortoises procreate.  It’s a very slow process.  Today, Barb and I stopped to observe ostriches at an ostrich farm.  There was one just by the fence flapping his wings almost as if he were doing a ritual dance.  As he danced, he moved closer and closer to the fence.  Suddenly I noticed there was another ostrich also facing the road, but lying on the ground.  So, we have empirical proof that ostriches breed in captivity.  And I can tell you that they are much faster than tortoises.

BARB:  The Cape Peninsula is beautiful in the wildness about it.  We drove along the coast and I kept

asking Leon to stop and pull over so that I could take photos of the huge crashing waves on the white sand beaches.  He is a good sport and indulges my desire to have a photo of absolutely everything we (I) see.  At one point there was a huge ostrich standing on the side of the road who then moved right into the middle of the road.  Of course, I had to jump out quickly to get a photo of it.  In my rush, I didn’t notice the group of Eland and Bontebok antelopes right beside me on the other side of the road.  That stop probably lasted a half hour because there were three adorable baby ostriches and many more large ones. 

In addition to seeing baboons, mating ostriches, and antelopes, we walked up to the top of Cape Point.  Then we walked out to the Cape of Good Hope.  Both of these Capes are wonders of nature how they jut straight up out of the wild sea.  I can see why the original name of the Cape of Good Hope was Cape of Storms.   I think I took several hundred photos of them.

Leon standing on bluff of Cape Point with Cape of Good Hope in background

Earlier on the drive down the peninsula we saw a group of cute baboons along side the road (we think they must be like our raccoons by the road) and I wanted to get a photo of them but Leon was driving too fast to stop on a dime for me.  However, we later determined that we probably will see lots of baboons because everywhere we went were signs “Baboons are Dangerous.  Do not feed the Baboons”.  So evidently we need to watch out for them when we are out walking.  I also saw a sign alongside the trail with a drawing of a cobra and a skull and crossbones on it.  I’m assuming we need to watch out for cobras as well.  I may not be doing a lot of trail walking on this trip.

LEON:  I have to echo Barb’s comment on the wildness of this coast.  There are literally thousands of shipwrecks within a few hundred miles.  Easily visible just off the Cape is a group of rocks with the waves crashing again and again upon them.  It was the site of one of the bad wrecks in the early twentieth century.  It is so easy to imagine the sea throwing a ship up against those rocks again and again and again.  In the wreck above,  all but two of the lifeboats made it safely around the Cape and into False Bay.