The Cape of Good Hope

I'm back from a wonderful trip to South Africa and Zimbabwe, on crutches and without my luggage. It was a "pinch me, I can't believe I'm here" experience with something astounding every day. I'll post photos in the next few blogs, but today's pics are from Cape Town and the Cape of Good Hope, as they are the ones I have on my iPad. The others are on my camera which I can't recharge until I get my wires and things. They are in my luggage which is in Spain.

In Cape Town, we stayed at Southern Sun The Cullinan, near the waterfront. Gracious, airy, and staffed by some of the nicest people you could ever meet, I could have spent the whole time there. My four friends and I started with the Green Market, where we went wild haggling and buying things for which we have absolutely no use, but what bargains!

The first official day of our tour took us to the Cape of Good Hope, the southwestern-most tip of the continent, where I expected to see whales and seals, but what we actually saw were penguins (Jackass penguins, so named because of the noise they make), ostriches, baboons, cape zebras, and dassies. Dassies are the only living members of the genus Petromus, and we found them among the rocks at the top of Cape Town's Table Mountain. Very cute.

Next, we visited Boulders Beach and its colony of Jackass penguins. They are severely endangered and like all penguins, TOO cute.

I really didn't expect to find zebras and baboons so close to Antarctica but there they were, flourishing, only a mile or so from the windswept Cape. Here, I'll violate the rule of good blogs and post more photos than text. You're supposed to do it the other way around, but I don't care to leave any of these out.