Day 61: A Blustery Penguin Excursion to Boulders Beach — Lunch at Kalky’s Fish and Chips

It was rainy and windy this morning but we got up and out anyway, and headed to Boulders Beach in Simon’s Town to see the penguins.

I’d done this little excursion back when I came to Cape Town in 2003 with my family (sister Julia studied a semester at University of Cape Town). Knew it was something we had to do again.

This colony of African penguins lives and breeds on Boulder Beach — hundreds of them. They mate for life, and on this particular day we saw dozens of couples with little fuzzy gray chicks. It’s unclear who does the nest-sitting and who does the errand-running, but in each couple, there was one doing each.

We tourists were up on a wooden boardwalk, with clear instructions not to disrupt the birds (no selfie-sticks allowed, for example). If it hadn’t been blustery and sideways drizzly, we would have stayed all day laughing and making up goofy voices for the birds.

Why are they so so funny? We were trying to think: What other animal walks on two feet like that? They’re so human. And they so don’t care that the tourists are there gawking.

Ready for lunch, we drove over to Kalky’s seafood shack in Kalk Bay — a recommendation from Cleveland friend Ken Greaney. Glad we did! Fish and chips and prawns on a picnic table by the fish market.

Because we were on that side of the Cape, we drove to see the beach at Muizenberg — a popular spot for beginner surfers because it’s warm and calm. Not today! Crazy winds, huge and frequent crashing waves. But it was our first glimpse at the Indian Ocean, so it was cool.

We drove back into town and let the kids race around De Waal park near our house for a bit before heading home for chill puzzles, games, dinner and bed.

Random:

• Teddy’s getting good at the driving! I’m going to give it a try when we head out in to the countryside on a road trip in a week. He can handle the city driving.
• We have seen two funny mattress store names here: Bed Fellows and Rest Assured.