South Africa observations

So, a couple of things that we have noticed about South Africa in our limited time here and the limited locations we have been too. 

 
Parking meters - There are none. When you park, an attendant comes to you and you pay your money to park, say 20 rand for 30 minutes and you get a ticket in exchange. When there are no attendants around or parking is free, you will find that a man in an orange hi-vi vest will approach you, tell you his name and that he will look after your car for you whilst you are gone. At the end of your stay you simply give him a few rand and for that you will probably get seen out of your parking spot safely. I'm not sure what happens if you don't pay! I don't think they have some kind of protection racket going on and that you will find your wheels gone if you don't pay. I've got to admit that I quite liked it. At least you can leave stuff in your boot safe in the knowledge that someone is looking out for it. Or at least it felt that way to us.

These observations might well be the exception to the rule, but its what we saw. It appears that there still appears to be a large disproportion of wealth in this country. There is also a lack of public transport. Hardly any buses and no trains that I have seen. This means that no car equals no travel unless you can thumb a lift with someone or you get picked up by one of the vans  that travel around plying their trade as taxis.

Pingvinek

Terv szerint a Fokvároshoz közeli Boulders beachre szerettünk volna elmenni megnézni a pingvineket, de Hermanusban a helyiek mind a Bettys Bay nevű helyet ajánlották mondván, hogy a Boulders túlzsúfolt a túristákkal és néha be is szokták zárni, mert a pingvinek bestresszelnek a sok embertől. Bettys Bay Hermanushoz közel található, sokkal jobban eldugott és rajtunk kívül alig voltak látogatók. Úszni sajnos nem tudtunk a pingvinekkel, mert inkább kirándulós idő volt, mint strandolós.
A pingvinek a sziklákon élnek, a repedésekbe, üregekbe rakják a tojásaikat. Rettentően büdösek voltak! Nem tudom, hogy a sok haltól-e amit nyersen megesznek vagy a víztől rohadnak, de hosszú távon elviselhetetlen szaguk volt. Szerencsére még nem találták fel a szagos internetet így a szag nélkül tudom nektek őket megmutatni.

Bettys Bay

Volt egy pár

Pápaszemes pingvin

A kicsi még borzas és nem hasonlít a felnőttekre

Ez a pingvinfajta - pápaszemes vagy afrikai pingvin - egyedül Afrika partjainál él. Veszélyeztetett állatfaj. 40-50 centi magas. Fekete-fehér színű a rejtőzködés miatt. A hasán fehér, hogy amikor halra vadászik a hal alulról ne lássa a vízből. A hátán fekete, hogy amikor a vízben úszik a fóka és más ragadozó ne lássa felülről.

Angolul jackass, szamár pingvinnek hívják, mert a szamárhoz hasonló hangot ad ki. Nagyon vicces.

Nagyon jó úszók, de a szárazföldön esetlenek. Repülni rövid távon se tudnak, páros lábbal ugranak fel a sziklára és furcsán, kihúzott testtel, szinte szaladva közlekednek.

Fiatal pingvin

A pingvinkolónia a sziklás tengerparton él és pár méterrel odébb volt egy pár lakóház (nem tudom hogyan bírják a szagot). Egyszer csak azt vettük észre, hogy négy pingvin talált egy rést az egyik ház kerítésén és bementek az udvarra, majd egyből a ház bejárata felé igyekeztek. Nem mindennapi látogatók! 

Betörők

Legközelebb a Cape borvidékre és a Tábla hegy tetejére megyünk.

Day 10 - The sea

Awake at 06:08 today and caught a glimpse of the sun :-) As the morning went on the weather got better. After breakfast, we got the car packed and took advantage of the sun and walked to the nearby beach. Our morning then consisted of stops along the coastal path whale watching. We stopped off at Roman rock again and saw a whale mother with its albino baby. After a visit to a cake shop that Eri wanted to visit, we headed off for our whale cruise.

The first 30 minutes consisted of the boat heading out over giant waves towards the far shore. On the journey we got to see quite a few whales that were slapping thier fins on the water, swimming upside down or just swimming around on the surface.Unfortunately we didn't get to see any breaching whales close up but we did get to see a couple doing this a bit further away as we had done from the shore. We were at the front of the boat and it was going up and down a bit in the swell and a couple of people were sea-sick including a boy who was on his knees wretching over the side.

Cape fur seals lazing around in the harbour.

Sitting on the dock of the bay.

Southern right whale 'spy hopping'

Fin slapping.

Erika watching the whale.

Spy hopping (its eye is visible on the left near the white patch).

After the whale trip, we then set off to Bettys bay to see the African penguin colony (also known as 'jackass penguins' due to the donkey 'hee-haw' sound they make). There must have been thousands of them on and around the rocks and we got some really nice pictures. Although they did smell a bit fishy!!!

The penguin colony.

Sunbathing penguin.

Housebreaking penguins.

Another Dassie.

After a good look at the penguins we then drove round the coast along towards Gordons bay before heading inland to Stellenbosch.

Day 9 - Rain

Today was a day of truly rubbish weather. I woke up at 6:30am and opened the curtains to discover low grey clouds, windy conditions and a belt of rain away in the distance across the bay. A quick google of the weather forecast on the hotels pc did not bring to much hope as rain was forecast to occur with either a 20% or 40% chance depending on which report you believed. I hoped for the 20% chance and that none of that percentage would be around at noon when we were due to be on our boat trip!

How wrong I was though. Heavy showers became more frequent and when we drove to the harbour to see what would be happening, we discovered that all cruises for the day had been cancelled due to poor weather; which was not surprising as it was raining at the time.

We did however manage to squeeze in 40 minutes land based whale watching from a point called Roman rock, before the the next downpour came. The remainder of the day was spent looking at the gloomy weather thinking how crap it was and hoping that it would significantly improve tomorrow. We have got ourselves booked on the noon trip again - weather permitting.

We have decided that if we don't make the boat trip tomorrow, we are off. We are going to visit a less publicised penguin colony at a place called Bettys bay. Nato, the hotel guy said that Boulders beach is getting very busy and that the penguins have been getting stressed out. So we have decided to give this alternative a go. Then we will be taking the scenic route along the coastal R44 road before heading inland to Stellenbosch. We will then be stopping in the winelands for 2 nights. After that we have another hotel booked in Cape Town. Cape Town was our 3rd choice location as we were hoping to stop further south around the False bay area, but we discovered that a lot of the reasonably priced places were booked up on the Friday night. So we ended up looking at Cape Town again. At least all of this Internet searching passed the time during the bad weather....

In the evening we went to a traditional restaurant call 'Annie st Kombuis'. The menu was strange in that you didn't have a menu at the table. They brought a big blackboard over to your table and stood the board on a chair for you to read what was on offer. Annie then came over and gave a description of each meal. Most sounded lovely , except the liver or the tripe........We went for a starter of Smoorsnoek (pieces of fish in potato and onion) followed by traditional stew (lamb curry) for me and venison (Kudu) pie for Erika. There was however still no bunny chow :-( Although the guest house owner from Plettenberg told me that I should be able to get this dish in one of the Malay cafes back in Main street, Cape Town. Which is quite handy really as that is near were we are stopping, so here's hoping :-)

How most of the day looked!

Lookout bird.

See the feint rainbow on the other side.

This whale is on its back with its flippers up in the air.

This whale is on its side and peeping at us.

Rough seas.