Road Trip

Today presented a tough call with regard to a photo choice... it was either this or a baboon sitting on the coast eating my gingerbread cookies from Jane. I settled on the penguin because penguins have never thrown things at our car, and baboons do that all the time.

We made a short road trip down Cape Point, stopping in Muizenberg for beer (surfer land) and Simonstown for wonderment (penguin land) on the way to the very bottom of the wilderness-protected tip of the continent, where we climbed a steep, tourist-laden hill and squinted our eyes to try to see Antarctica. Unfortunately, no one succeeded at this.

The penguins, however, must be excellent travelers because they made the long trek from that frosty land in the '80s, landing inexplicably in Simonstown and only Simonstown.

I picture a whole group of them manning a gigantic iceberg as their sailing vessel to Africa. At the helm would be a captain penguin wearing a pointed hat and shouting "land ho" as he hoists his fin in the air upon sight of Boulder Beach. Then all the penguins would dive ashore on their bellies. I was told that this was not how it happened but no one knows the true version so you never know.

Anyway, they immediately took over beaches to which humans now have only limited access, always supervised by conservationists in brown pantsuits who warn us to stay 10 meters away from the penguins at all times or else. But there's a boardwalk through the mangroves and the penguins all nest right next to it and look at you inquisitively from much less than 10 meters away (see above) and in this case the space limit is reduced as long as long as you don't leave the boardwalk. Lucky us.