May 2, 2015

We have spent the last three days in Cape Town, South Africa and we wish we had more time here! (Although that has been true just about everywhere!). We arrived to Cape Town from Phuket after a very LONG flight. We came through Doha, Qatar…it was quite a long trip, about 17 hours in the air. It wouldn’t have been too bad except that we were delayed on both flights; leaving Phuket, there was another plane stuck on the tarmac, then in Doha, there was a medical emergency on board so we had to wait for medical personnel to come on and check the guy out before we took off.

Once we arrived, everything went smoothly. Our shuttle was waiting to take us to the hostel and we got all checked in without any issues. That first day, after checking in, we took a train to go to Boulders Beach where they have a penguin sanctuary that was really awesome. Hayden has loved penguins for quite some time, so this was really cool for him. The penguins live on land here, this is one of the only remaining places in the world with a colony of land dwelling penguins. There were penguins in all stages of growth…eggs, baby chicks, older chicks and full size penguins. Some were playing in the water, but most were just hanging out on land. It was really interesting because some of them had nests in the sand where others had nests back in the trees or under bushes.

We also saw a couple of penguins getting a little amorous…lol.

The next day, we went to take the gondola up to Table Mountain. We decided to be adventurers and hike up to the mountain which turned out to be a nice, but long, walk. From our hostel it was only a few km to the base, but it took us about an hour to get there. Unfortunately, as we were arriving, we noticed that the gondola was stopped and it turned out that there was an ongoing rescue mission on the mountain so they had to shut everything down!! We waited for it to get going again and we were on in about an hour. The ride up was really cool. The mountain is about 3,100 ft tall and it just comes straight up from sea level. The views were amazing. We could see all of Cape Town all the way down to the Cape of Good Hope, the Southernmost tip of Africa.

We had lunch up on the mountain and then headed back down for the rest of the afternoon. That evening, we just HAD to go see The Avengers 2. 🙂 The waterfront was beautiful, and they had a huge shopping area where the movie theater was located. Adam and Hayden were very happy to get to see the movie, we were a little afraid that we wouldn’t be able to find it in English.

After a great night of McDonalds for dinner and the Avengers, we spent Saturday going Great White Shark Cage Diving!!! It was SO COOL!! The actual experience was really neat. There were a bunch of sharks and we had great views from both the top of the boat and inside of the cage. My only complaint is that it was windy and rainy while we were out on the water. The waves were very large and both Adam and I got a little queasy. We got some great videos of the sharks from both the top and the bottom. Unfortunately, the minimum age was 10 to get into the cage, so Hayden had to watch from the top. Realistically, it was just as well because with the waves, it would have been tough for him to balance in the cage without going under water.

In the evening, we had our meeting for the safari and met everyone that is going to be in our group. We have lucked out and there are only 6 of us traveling together! We’re pretty sure that it’s because of us that the group is so small…the tour company had to let people know that there was a child on the tour and apparently several people switched to different dates to keep it adults only. This works out great for us because we will have the 24 PAX bus pretty much to ourselves! 🙂

We take off first thing in the morning to spend the next 42 days on the road traveling through Africa from Cape Town all the way up to Nairobi, Kenya…it will certainly be the adventure of a lifetime!