On Wednesday I got bored with comming home after class and doing nothing so I decided to take a little adventure. When I went Shark diving, the rest of the group when on a tour of the Cape Pensuila and Simons Town, which I obviously missed - but I wanted to see the PENGUINS!!
Simons Town is about 1:30 min drive outside of Cape Town so I decided that this would be the perfect time to figure out the railsystem in Cape Town. I picked myself up a train map, and found that Simon's Town was actually the last stop on the southern train route - it only cost me 7.5Rand ($1.10USD) for a hour and 10 min train ride. The train was really neat, it wound right along hte ocean the entire way.
They wanted me to sit in first class, but I wasn't having paying more, so I sat in working class. It was pretty empty on the way there but entierly packed on the way back. Simon's Town is a working class fishing town, but a lot of the fisherman do not live in town, rather they live in Cape Town and commute via train. I left around 515 and the train was PACKED.
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| Main Harbour of Simon's Town |
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| Fishing Boats in the harbour |
Once I got into Simon's Town, I adventured around the town for a bit - there was not to much to see as it is a working fishing town, not really a tourist place. The RSA Navy has its main home in Smon's Town, there was a fairly large military presence, just from walking around I notced a lot of people with the Navy insigna on their clothing. After walking around town for about 45 min, I wanted to find what I had really come for - the PENGUINS!
Boulders Beach is about a 4km walk from town, but totally worth it! Boulders Beach is a sheltered cove between Simon's Town and Cape point that has become home to a colony of African (Jackass) Penguins. It is one of the few places in the world where you can observe the penguins at close range.
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| The African Penguin is an endangered species - of hte 1.5 million in the early 1900's only 10% remain today. Their coloring is for protection while in the ocean - white on the belly for underwater predators (seals) who are looking up at them; black on top fr predators looking down on the water (gulls/birds). |
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| Foxy Beach - the largest colony of African Penguins. A lot of the penguins were out fishing when I was there - I mainly saw the babies and teenagers on the beach. |
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| The grouping in the middle is a group of babies. African Penguins are born with fur, they are unable to enter the water until they have shed ther fur. f you look closely you can see that some of these babies have started to shed the brown fir, and are showing some of their black skin. |
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| Hi Big Boy! The penguins diet is made up of squid and shoal fish, which they used their seriously sharp beaks to catch. |
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| This Lil Man was may favorite. He really wanted to go swimming, but then he just waddled around the water for quite a while... |
I took a video of my favorite little guy wandering around the water -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeA4U6zzAxQ - it suprising how small they were!
I am off to the Stormers Rugby match . . . CANT WAIT should be a fun blog post tomorrow!
