A Connecticut Yankee in South Africa

We then ventured over to Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point in Africa and the place where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Indian Ocean.

It was a beautiful area: a beach with lots of large rocks to climb on and lots of tide pools to poke around in. This is approximately where the oceans meet:

Dad and I had fun mountain-goat-ing our way over the rocks to get to the water so we could stand in both oceans at once while Mom spent time looking for seashells and finding jellyfish that had washed up.

I could have spent the entire day in the tide pools looking for animals – I found a bunch of hermit crabs, saw sea urchins in the wild for the first time in my life (and had to avoid stepping on them while I was standing in the oceans), and found a bunch of tiny starfish, small fish, and colorful anemones.

We also went to the Cape Agulhas lighthouse, and Dad and I paid to climb up to the top of it (Mom doesn’t like heights very much). I’m okay with heights, but I’m not a huge fan of ladders…as it turned out we had to climb up four very steep ladders to get to the top. But I sucked it up and went anyway. There was a nice view of the whole area from the top and lots of fresh ocean air.

Yeah, that same “Cape of Good Hope” that you read about in your history textbook in middle school!

During our time in Cape Town we headed out to Cape Point. We stopped at Boulder Beach, which is famous for being the home of a great many African penguins. Having never seen penguins in the wild before, I was very excited to see some. I was not disappointed.

We then continued on to Cape Point, which apparently is the home of a great many baboons. Nobody told us this ahead of time. It was a little unnerving, since I know they can be really dangerous (have you seen their teeth?!) and there had been signs all over the roads on the way:

Or my personal favorite:

But yeah, they were just walking around all over the place. Right next to everyone. There were people that worked at the park whose job it was to just walk around holding a big stick in case the baboons needed to be encouraged to back off.

But anyway, Cape Point was gorgeous. The waves were crazy – all along the coast there was tons of foam.

The waves would crash on the rocks and the water would go up like twenty feet in the air – I could have just sat there and watched it for hours.