Penguins, Baboons and the View from Cape Point

What is the Tour du Monde? Please click here to find out more

Text by Alex Marashian Photos by Rainer Hosch

Penguins, Baboons and the View from Cape Point

The strangest thing about Cape Town, for me at least, is how familiar it is — at times not unlike certain European cities, with a hint of San Francisco to it, a touch of Vancouver, and, from what people tell me, a dash of Sydney as well. I have to be honest: A sense of South Africa’s tragic past and difficult present are always with me here, too, and this tends to dampen — and maybe also to deepen — my experience. But I was expecting that. What I wasn’t expecting was for Cape Town otherwise to feel — and don’t take this the wrong way — so ordinary.

One of the great things about making a trip out to Cape Point is that it quickly dispels that feeling of ordinariness. After all, what’s ordinary about pulling up at a rest stop by the sea and meeting a colony of penguins? Or rolling down your window to wave at the roadside baboons as you barrel by? Or, for that matter, standing on one of the southernmost points of the African Continent, staring out toward Antarctica (a mere 3,000 kilometers away) and watching the full arc of a rainbow — beginning, middle and end — take shape before your eyes?

To reach Cape Point from the city, we take the coastal road down the eastern side of the Cape Peninsula, along the shores of False Bay. The landscape is typically dramatic here (in fairness, another thing that differentiates Cape Town from any other city I’ve visited). Then, after ten or fifteen minute’s driving, we enter Simon’s Town, an historic village and important naval base, first for the British and now for the South African navy. Historic and well-preserved, the town is well-suited for a quick tour, especially if you go in for Victorian seaside architecture, wrought-iron balustrades and the like. We, however, have an appointment with the penguins.

A few kilometers beyond Simon’s Town lies the aptly named Boulders Beach. A series of  sandy coves bounded by gigantic granite boulders, it’s well worth a visit in its own right, but the presence of a colony of African penguins here makes this beach a must. The colony, one of only three on the continent (the other two are also located here in the Western Cape province), first settled Boulders Beach back in 1982. There’s no record of penguins ever having lived here before, and their decision to inhabit a place already well-trafficked by humans remains somethings of a mystery — at least to us humans. As for the penguins, 3,000 of them and counting, they act as if they own the place — which, in a sense they do. Boulders Beach is part of Table Mountain National Reserve, and the penguins are a protected species here. Don’t be surprised if they come strolling by and expect you to get out of their way. 

It’s on the drive from Boulders Beach to Cape Point that we encounter another species of animal most of us on the Tour du Monde had only ever seen before in a zoo: the Chacma Baboon. There are troops of these lovely (at least I think them so) creatures inhabiting the southern Cape Peninsula, and they want food — not their food (fruits, roots, bulbs, honey, insects, scorpions and, during low tide, the occasional seafood treat of sandhoppers or shellfish) but yours. How else to explain their waiting along the roadside, watching the cars go by, when they should be out frolicking in their sprawling national park? 

From behind the wheel, our production associate, Zac, tells us the story of how he and a friend were mugged by a baboon while eating soft-serve vanilla ice creams at the base of Cape Point, the very place we’re headed. Surveying the back seat of our van, where bags of production goodies — power bars, trail mix, peanut M&Ms and potato chips of all varieties — are lying open, we decide to roll up our windows as we slow down to take pictures. “They’re fast, man,” Zac warns, and he should know. Me, I could stay right here, admiring the baboons and even getting out the car to size them up a bit (they’re apparently uninterested in those not bearing food), but Cape Point (and, hopefully, more baboons) beckons.

Cape Point itself is so impressive that it doesn’t much disappoint me that we see no  baboons (I’m temped to buy a soft-serve ice cream at one point, but finally decide against it). A rocky promontory at the end of the 30-kilometer long Cape Peninsula, the point is the subject of several misconceptions. Southerly though it is, it is not the most southernmost point of Africa. That distinction falls to Cape Agulhas, some 150 kilometers to the (south) east. Nor, as is often claimed, is Cape Point the place where the cold Benguela current of the Atlantic Ocean and the warm Aghulas Current of the Indian actually meet, creating a “line in the ocean” between two of the world’s greatest bodies of water. 

In fact, the meeting point between the two currents is constantly shifting along the southern and southwestern Cape coast, and there is no visual effect caused by the two oceans’ mingling (though there are dangerous swells and localized tides, making the entire region is a graveyard for ships). In the end, Cape Point and the nearby Cape of Good Hope, are simply majestic promontories for contemplating nature, man and world history (it’s around these points that Portuguese ships first sailed in 1497), opening up the Cape Route and a new era in trade and human exploitation), not to mention taking great pictures. And when, as it did for us, a full rainbow takes shape over the perilous seas just south of this point, you can leave here with a feeling of good hope yourself.