South Africa Day 3: Cape Town Tour!

I actually got a bunch of travel blogging done this weekend! Kicking off with our first morning in Cape Town! After a delicious South African dinner on the waterfront the night before, we all slept like rocks and were up about 7:45 am. The kids had a separate room on the same floor of the hotel and we met in the lobby at 8:30 for breakfast. The hotel breakfast was FANTASTIC - no one loves a good hotel breakfast more than my children (particularly Landon who consumed a truly unbelievable amount of food) - and we looked forward to it each morning we were there.

Our private guide, Anita, met us in the hotel lobby right at 9. She had a Mercedes sprinter van ready for us, so we piled in and took off to explore Cape Point and the entire Cape Town peninsula. Anita was a mixed-race, lifelong Cape Tonian, who grew up under apartheid, and had two grown children in their 20's. She was so knowledgeable and had so many stories, we all really enjoyed learning from her.

The tour lasted all day, we got back about 6 pm. Cape Town is very big -it seemed like more of a county than a city in US-terms - and unbelievably beautiful.

We started traveling along the Atlantic Seaboard via Sea Point, Cloifton and Camps Bay to Hout Bay.

Anita told us that The Kissing Booth was filmed here, and Claire enjoyed hearing all the scenes that were filmed at any particular location.

The weather was cloudy and chilly, but we were happy to be out in anything that didn't feel like the surface of the sun and the rain held off all day so we could explore.

We continued our route via Chapman's Peak, which I had read was one of the world's most beautiful coastal drives and I believe it, to the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve at Cape Point.

The Nature Reserve was a fun drive. There are a lot of animals there, many of which we didn't see (like the baboons!), but we did get to see some ostrich drama. This handsome man was found walking along the road, much like the bison in Yellowstone, he did not at all care that we were supposed to be driving in that lane.

Anita told us how the male ostriches will chase the lady ostriches to try to impress them, and if they catch up, they do a special dance to impress her. If she is impressed, they form a mated pair.

This guy was chasing two single ladies across the bush, but when he caught up to them, another larger male approached from the opposite direction and our bachelor turned around and ran the other way like he had always meant to do that. We also saw Dassi and Red Hartebeests (which our guide was VERY excited about!)- it was a fun preview of our safari days!

We got our picture at the Cape of Good Hope, which is not actually the southernmost of the African continent, but it's close to it and it's pretty!

We took a cable car up the mountain for some great views.

This one is now Landon's phone background, so apparently it spoke to him.

Anita told us she's heard people say Cape Town looks like Iceland and it was so true - stark, gorgeous, striking... we thought it was like a mix of Iceland + California coast.

We continued on to Simon's Town and Boulders Beach where we got to see PENGUINS!!

Boulders Beach has a growing colony of the very endangered African Penguin and they were so cute and so fun to see.

There were fluffy chonky babies and handsome adults and we watched them for quite a while.

We had a late lunch at The Harbour House, which was delicious and had great views.

A couple of seals played in the water out front and one was flirting pretty hard with Landon.

We were supposed to end the day with Table Mountain but it was closed for repairs for a couple days (we just happened to arrive in time for their annual maintenance), so that was too bad, but honestly we had seen so much and it was already 5 pm and we didn't feel disappointed.

It started pouring once we arrived back at the hotel, so we ate dinner at the lobby restaurant and tucked ourselves back in bed, excited about tomorrow!