Penguin Party

 From the bush in Sabi Sands near Kruger National Park we traveled to Cape Town where we spent the next three days being spoiled with some great tours and food. On our first full day there we boarded a bus for the Cape Tour which took us south along the coast around the Cape of Good Hope and up the side of False Bay to the African Penguin colony at Boulders before heading back to our hotel at Table Bay.

The coast is ruggedly beautiful. We felt right at home as the wind blew steadily while we were there. I wanted to change my lens at the penguin colony but didn't dare because of flying sand.

Our stops included the light house at the Cape of Good Hope and a shore lunch on the beach at the end of the continent.

The area of the lighthouse is inside Table Mountain National Park. One of many surprises about the landscape is that it is part of the Cape Floristic Kingdom, the smallest but richest of the six floral kingdoms in the world. There are thousands of various types of plants here, many of which are indigenous and a number of which are endemic, occurring nowhere else in the world!

 The African Penguin is listed as an endangered species. Just a few thousand remain of the 1.5 million estimated population of the early 1900's. The colony we visited at Boulders is one of the few still thriving, due in large part to the reduction in commercial trawling in False Bay; an activity that previously decimated the fish life that made up the penguins' diet.

 These guys are not very big and they have a braying call; a trait that once earned them the name of Jackass Penguin before it was changed to the current African Penguin.

 Their coloring is subtle but fun with pink accents on the face and feet.

 The birds we saw were stretched out over a length of coastline consisting of scrubby bushes and large rock. Some of the animals seemed just as anxious to avoid the wind as we were.

 This bird, above, seemed to have more mottled markings than most.

The bird in the center, below, has started molting. The height of the molt is in December but we saw a few penguins that were already well along. They need to fatten up before it starts because they have to go on a forced diet - a fast of about 21 days that they can't enter the water while their new feathers grow out.