Cape Fauna

An interesting thing about coming to another continent is the variety of plants and animals you don't see at home. It's been entertaining when we are driving on a road near Cape Town and see a sign warning about penguins crossing the road. There are numerous signs warning that baboons are dangerous wild animals, and it's illegal to feed them. The charm of these warnings hasn't really worn off yet. 

Yesterday, we visited the Harold Porter botanical garden. It was a very nice garden, and connected to a few hiking trails. Unfortunately, one of the trails was closed due to flood damage, but another (Leopards Kloof) was open. We walked for a while on that trail, but turned back when the terrain got a little rough for Adam's flop flops. While sitting in the garden cafe, a mother bacon and her baby sauntered onto the patio and stole a bunch of sugar packets from a table. Apparently, baboons are the raccoons of South Africa.

Last night, we had our last nice dinner of the trip in a small wine town called Franschoek. The drive into the valley was worth the price of admission. Adam could not truly appreciate the view for fear of driving off a cliff, but Emily took a few pictures. The rolling mountainside and steep kloofs were stunning. The dinner itself was really nice as well. We did a five course tasting menu with a bottle of wine. After dinner, we took the flat route home for safety's sake.

Today, we visited Cape Point. This is the southwesternmost pint in Africa, and home of the famous Cape of Good Hope. The landscape was a native dry fynbos ecosystem, with a lot of succulents and resilient bushes. While there, we saw some kind of antelope, ostriches, seals, and baboons. 

Tomorrow we fly home. We've had a great time, but we are ready to be home as well.

We've included some pictures below, many of which show some of the interesting animals we've seen in the last two days.

A colorful bird

A cappuccino cippolini monkey examining a flower.

A beach along Africa's southern coast

One second after this selfie, a wave soaked is both.

The beautiful view from the treacherous drive to franschoek.

How much silverware does one person need?

Elands, we think at Cape Point.

Cape of Good Hope. Or Kaap de Goeie Hoop.

The old light at Cape Point

The new light

Some kind of honeyeater.

The rock that sink the Lusitania.

Lizard.

This is the furthest point on the cape.

Chicken. Just kidding, it's an ostrich.

The Wine Region

We've now been in the Cape wine region for a few days and are having a great time.

On our way out of Cape Town, we stopped at the Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden. The garden has a fantastic collection of plants from the various regions of South Africa, and particularly the Cape region. A highlight was the Boomslang, a treetop boardwalk that was built out over a hillside giving great views of Table Mountain and the area around Cape Town.

Our guest house is in Gordon's Bay, less than an hour from Cape Town and fairly close to Stellenbosch, the center of the wine region. We're surrounded by mountains and have a fantastic view of False Bay from our guest house.

Our first day we visited some wineries and had a lovely lunch at one of them. We also wandered around Stellenbosch which is a completely charming town. Today we went hiking in the Jonkershoek nature reserve. The views were spectacular and we had a picnic next to a small waterfall.

The weather has been absolutely lovely. Partly cloudy and in the low 80s. Coming back to Madison will certainly be a shock.

 A ficus-lined walkway in the gardens

 The Boomslang

 A lovely hillside covered in fynbos

 A view of Table Mountain from the gardens

 Rustenberg winery, one of the oldest in Stellenbosch.

 A view from the tasting room at Uva Mira winery.

 We weren't there just for the view. The wine was really good too.

A chubby blue-headed lizard at the Jonkershoek nature preserve.

 This is a kloof, where we ate a kloofnic

Did I mention the beautiful views?

Cape Town and Simon's Town

We arrived in Cape Town on December 27. One of our first views was of the beautiful Table Mountain that overlooks the city.

The next morning we tried to take the cable car up to the top of Table Mountain, but the line was ridiculously long so we left. It was a nice view, even from the lower station. We ended up visiting the South African National Museum and wandering around the Company's Gardens. The Gardens were originally created by the Dutch East India Trading Company to grow produce for their voyages.

The next day, we took the city train to Simon's Town, a small beach-front town on False Bay, about an hour's ride by train from Cape Town. The train tracks ran directly on the beach for half of the trip, so it was a beautiful ride. Though it's so windy here that sometimes the sand from the beach would start to blow in through the windows so you had to close them or risk looking like a sugar doughnut. From the train station, we walked a couple kilometers to Boulder's Beach where there is a colony of African penguins that you can view up close. The penguins are still endangered, but clearly they felt safe on this secluded beach.

We also viewed the Castle of Cape Hope, previously on the sea front but now about a half kilometer into town due to land reclamation. This fortress was built in the 1600s and is the oldest building still in use in South Africa. We viewed the daily 'handing over of the keys' ceremony. Close by was the District 6 museum - a memorial of sorts to the thousands of Cape Town residents who were forcibly removed from their homes and relocated away from the center of town in the 1960s when this district was rezoned as a 'white zone.' Their homes were subsequently razed.

On New Year's Eve we did a group wine tour to four wineries near Cape Town. One wine we tried that is unique to South Africa is Pinotage. They had a lot of other nice reds as well. In the evening, we ventured down to the V&A (Victoria & Albert) Waterfront to take part in their big New Year's celebration. There was live music, food vendors, tons of people, and a rather anti-climactic countdown. It was still good to be there and be part of it.

Happy New Year everyone!

Spice Island

We made it to Zanzibar, an island that's part of Tanzania, known for its beaches, spice plantations and former slave trade. The main city on the island is called Zanzibar Town, with the oldest part of the city called Stone Town. We wandered through the winding, narrow streets for a day while, bought spices at the central market, and had dinner at the outdoor gardens. We also did a cooking class with our hotel's cook, toured a spice plantation, and went to a nearby beach with a sweet Danish couple that was also staying at our hotel (the hotel was outside Stone Town and the beach it was on was not the best for swimming.)

Skewers of seafood for dinner.

Fusion seafood lunch.

 Reading at our beach front hotel.

 A classic Zanzibar door.

 A Christmas tree in the Anglican cathedral.

 Spice plantation tour: pineapple

 Jack fruit

 Lemongrass

 Nutmeg

 Dhows viewed from our hotel.

 Hakuna matata beach.

Lions and rhinos and dik diks, oh my!

As I write this, we are on the beach in Zanzibar. We finished our safari yesterday. It was an amazing experience seeing Tanzania's national parks.

On the first day, we visited Ngorongoro crater. It is the largest intact caldera in the world. Inside, there is an extraordinary collection of animals. Because the crater has ample food and water, and due to the steep crater walls, most of the animals do not migrate in and our of the crater. We saw a lot of animals in the crater: zebras, wildebeest, hartebeest, several types of gazelles, warthogs, hippos, hyenas, elephants, many birds, one female lion and one black rhino. The rhino is particularly rare, as much of their population has been poached nearly to extinction. Apparently, rhino horn is thought to be an aphrodisiac in China, so poachers are paid obscene amounts of money to kill them and take their horns. It is an incredible waste of one of the world's beautiful animals, all for an absurd purpose. We were fortunate to be able to spot one.

We stayed on a coffee plantation that night, which was a delight. The next morning, we headed to lake manyara. The lake is home to more than 200 species of birds. We also saw hundreds of baboons, black faced monkeys, blue monkeys, giraffes, and many of the animals we had seen the previous day. At one point, we saw several hundred baboons in a single group, which isn't a common thing to see.

After the lake, we visited Tarangire national park, where we camped for two nights. The park is not very large, but it is home to thousands of elephants. Some of these are very old, very large elephants. On the first night, at sunset, a herd of elephants came to our camp to eat the trees near the site. It was intimidating to be so close to such a large animal. We rose early the next morning for a sunrise game drive. Almost immediately, we saw a cheetah. We watched as it stalked in the grass, looking for prey. Eventually, it ran after a pair of jackals. They got into a bit of a barking match before the cheetah trotted off into the bush. Later that morning we watched a female lion and three cubs laying in the sun on top of a ledge. It was also in Tangarire that we were introduced to the dik dik. These were the cutest animal we saw. They are a deer the size of a small dog. Super cute!

We did a lot of other drives, saw a lot of elephants, impala, waterbucks, and a lot of other animals I'm sure I've left of the list. It was a fantastic experience, and all the staff from the safari company were great. A very special thanks to out terrific driver, Aimi.

Now we are on Zanzibar, relaxing for a few days.