Cape of Good Hope: 25th Sep

My Second Guided tour was to the Cape of Good Hope which was run by Baz Bus.

Although it was a great tour it did have the feel of a school outing. Our guide did seem to want to treat us like a group of school children rather than adults - which was fair enough cause she gave us all lollypops at the end of it (yum yum)

First stop was an optional boat trip to seal Island - which I decided not to take as I would be seeing loads of seals when I am doing the Shark Volunteering. Instead I had a cup of tea and toastie with an English girl Rachel who had been on the wine tasting tour the previous day. It turned out that noone who went on the 1 hour boat trip enjoyed it as they seemed to cram so many people onto the boat that it looked more like a refugee boat than a tour one. We on the other hand had the fortune of having the local alco sitting beside and slurring about the history of the place.

There was also a very big seal which sat on the harbour getting fed by a local guy who was trying to get some money by getting people to take pictures of the themselves feeding it. Apparently the man and seal have been doing this for 23 years. Its not exactly ethical but I was told that the seal was free to come and go as it pleased.

Next stop on the trip was to a shark watch post overlooking a surfer beach. Here miss Madelan, sorry GUIDE Madalan, gave us all juice and biscuits while we looked around for whales and sharks. We did not see anything but on down the coast towards Simons Town we did have great views of whales - including a couple who actually breached. Again the big shits did it where I didn't have my camera focused so no photos.

On to the Penguin colony at boulders where we wer given half and hour to walk round taking photos. Me and Rachel overrun the time by 5 minutes and Miss Madelan was not pleased (I thought she was going to make us stand in the corner of the bus!)

p.p.pick up a penguin

After the penguins we drove to the entrance of the Cape Hope Naional Park and once inside got on our bikes - literally, Part of the trip is doing a cycle ride for about 20 minutes through a part of the park. All the bikes had seen better days with most of them having very poor brakes and just about all of them being stuck in one gear. If they were all the same gear it would have been fine but each person seemed to be stuck in either 1st or 5th. This meant that you would have one person peddling like crazy to get anywhere while the next person would fly past them with one turn of their foot. I brought up the rear as I was one of these people and was constantly having to stop and wait or else I would speed into the back of the other people.

Tour de Cape Hope

Lunch consisted of two rolls (Miss Madelen insisted on only 2 rolls each) with cold meat, salad, more juice and oranges that did a good impersonation of rocks. Then it was on to the actual cape where we were given 30 minutes (really into her time keeping this woman!) to climb up the light house and back again. Then we went to Cape of Good Hope itself - in an orderly fashion (No running allowed!) to take school group photos.

Finally it was back to Cape Town (having been given our lolly pops for being such good children). I felt sure we were going to get a gold star as well but we didn't.