Simons Town, the home of the navy of South Africa. Before we will dump our personal stuff in a backpackers lodge, we went to Boulders. This is a site, little bit to commercial, where you can watch penguins sitting there. Maybe a narrow mind, but these birds were cute for a half hour. When you look longer, there was nothing exciting to explore. Probably, these feathered friends were moulding, because of the circumstances there was no action, only smell.

And that moment in time, I did own a little camera, poorly equiped for shooting some nice pics in wildlife. Or with other words, over distance. This lack of technology I did not miss too much. However, with the camera which I have now (2008) I would not be so fastly bored, I guess.

Nevertheless, I was satisfied when I was writing in my journal that evening on the balcony of that lodge. Later on, all the alcoholics went to bar. After some delicious beers in another 'white' (how disappointing some way) establissement, we were little drunk and much too late back in the lodge. Sweet dreams.

Our second to last day we wanted to visit the Cape of Good Hope and find the southern tip of Africa.  Of course along the way we found out the drive would be a little longer than expected, and rather than drive all day just to say we were on the southern tip we stopped at the parks entrance.  It was a bit of a gloomy day so we decided to drive back to Simon's Town.  We heard rumors of this being a location for nesting penguins and as the young not too informed college students we were, we were baffled by the idea of penguins living in Africa.  So we had to check it out.  We stopped in Simon's town, mingled with some vendors and made our way down to the shore.  Scanning the area we were trying and failing to find a penguin.  Squinting and looking out over the waves we began pointing out a very small silhouette we thought was a penguin when we heard a young voice "That? that's not a penguin thats a bird" a young girl about 6 or 7 years old, not able to say her 'r's completely but able to know a penguin when she saw one.  "I'll show you where the penguins are"  And she took off with another friend.  We had no choice but to follow our new elementary guides through town, through a closed gate that we thought looked like somebody's yard and near a different part of shoreline.  "There's a penguin"  she pointed out for us.  And her and her friend continued to point out various nests with penguins guarding their eggs only a couple feet away from us.  We were amazed.  However it was clear the penguins did not appreciate our presence so after a few pictures we let them be and headed back.  We paid our young tour guides with a a one dollar bill for each of them in which they were both thrilled as they now had something they could bring to show and tell at school that week.  And we had our pictures to bring home to prove to our friends that yes, penguins do live in Africa.