South Africa (Cape Town)- Day 10- From Cape to Cape

Back to our normal early mornings—today’s adventure: The Cape of Good Hope! Picked up our Fiesta from the Hilton downtown at 7:30 and hit the road for one of our two last full days (L).   Drove over the pass to Camps Bay and down the coast to Hout Bay, where we went on a seal spotting boat trip to Duiker Island.  Seals everywhere! We watched them slipping and sliding up and down the rocks, twirling through the water—it was really cute.  Fortunately it’s not high shark season either so while it would have been cool to see the great whites hunting seals, we’re definitely okay with not seeing that play out.

Driving the coast is worth the day trip on its own, regardless of the sites or stops along the way.  The closest thing we can relate it to is either driving the Pacific Coast in California or a slightly tamer Amalfi Coast drive—it twists and turns the whole way and you are right over the water/on the cliffs.  Pretty awesome and we had a gorgeous day for it! Next we stopped in Noordhoek at a restaurant called FoodBarn—absolutely delicious and a very locavore kind of place. Locally sourced food, in-house bakery… what more do you need for breakfast?

Continuing down the Cape, we stopped frequently to take pictures of the gorgeous beaches we kept “discovering”; huge expanses of white sands with blue water and lots of white caps since they do get real waves down here. The big attraction was Cape Point, but we managed to make another stop at Cape Point Bakery in Scarborough on the way (a tiny little bread bakery in someone’s house right next to the beach) and spent a few minutes on the beach as well as we made our way down to the southwestern tip of Africa.

Cape Point National Park is so much bigger than I expected. We were really just there to do the Cape Point lighthouse and the Cape of Good Hope, but you could spend days in here hiking around and exploring the area.  The lighthouse at Cape Point, and the hike up to it, definitely provided some breathtaking views of the surrounding water and seaside—interestingly, the higher lighthouse was the original but because it was so often covered in cloud and mist at its elevation, they actually built one on the cliff-face about halfway down as well to actually cover the need.  Went over to get the picture with the Cape of Good Hope sign—couldn’t come all this way and not get it!

Next up were penguins in Simon’s Town! We first went past Boulders Beach to another little area that had some penguins that you could get really close to without the crowds which was great, but then decided to go for the real attraction and see the penguins en masse. Definitely a sight we won’t soon forget with penguins everywhere you turned!

Drove up the opposite coast on our way back to Cape Town and as we approached the city, we actually saw a fire up on Signal Hill. We had seen signs everywhere since we arrived about fire warning as “extremely high” on the color scale, but it turns out Cape Town really is California and they have a pretty big wildfire problem here too.  Helicopters were flying across water bombing the site etc, pretty crazy to see as smoke. We swung by home quickly and then went to sunset drinks over in Camps Bay—there was a very intense wind (over 50mph for sure!) which contributed to the spread of the fire and altered our plans slightly for outdoor cocktails at The Bungalow. We ended up sitting just inside but still had a great view of the sunset over the ocean—a great end to an awesome day trip!