Wine, Baboons, and Penguins

Cape Town is famous for its vineyards. In Stellenbosch, about an hour away from Long Street where we were staying is where the majority of South Africa’s wine is produced. We stopped at a few different wineries to sample cheese, wines, and to see how it was produced. I definitely learned more about wine than I ever cared to in my life – but it was a very fun day overall.
The next day, we went to the Southern most point in Africa. It’s called “The Cape of Good Hope” and is the meeting point of the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. It was so cool to be able to actually see the junction of the two contrasting water masses.

After our hike to the tip of the cape, there were two baboons in the parking lot. They come up to about your waist, and are very dangerous, so we waited in the car until they ran down into the brush. We thought the coast was clear, so we opened up the car doors, and we hadn't even closed them when one of the baboons came running towards us. It immediately jumped into our car and started rooting around through our stuff. We had a cosmopolitan magazine in there, and it ripped all the pages out, then found my bag of cookies and ate them! It ended up running away with a bag of chips. So nothing too great was lost – and it was actually a pretty funny situation looking back.
After the baboon encounter, we went to “Boulder Bay”. It’s a beautiful little lagoon, and the water is about 20 different shades of turquoise and blue colors. The granite boulders are 540 million years old, and everywhere you looked were penguins sunbathing on top of them. It was so weird having the temperature be 90 degrees out, and then to see penguins swimming around! They were pretty use to people, and had no problem waltzing right up to you to steal your spot in the sun. I wanted to keep one as a pet – but I figured it would be tough taking one back home on the plane.