A Long Beach Drive

April 28th

We started this morning by walking up to a car rental office just a few places from our hotel. As we were researching Cape Town and seeking advice from people that have been there or have/do live there, we learned that there are a lot of must see's that we would need a car to see. So we jumped at the chance to try our hand at driving in South Africa.

It took a lot of getting use to just riding on the opposite side of the road, now Jed was going to tackle driving on the other side of the road from the opposite side of the car. (The steering wheel is on the right side of the car over there.)

Since it was very cloudy when we got the car, we decided to wait until tomorrow to try to go to the top of Table Mountain, instead we started to drive to our first beach town for breakfast.

On our way to Kalk Bay, we saw St. James Beach. I was so excited about St. James beach. I had seen pictures of it when we were looking up all of our travel stuff but I was very unclear as to where it was or how we would fit it into our schedule. When we saw it from afar, we had to stop.

I loved the colorful beach "houses". They are little rooms for changing into and out of bathing suits, at least that is what we are guessing they are for. There is a small rock beach here and a tide pool which was way fun. We didn't stay long but we did get to watch a few minutes of the baptisms that were going on in the tide pool that morning which was really amazing to watch.

Kalk Bay was our next destination. A friend had recommended a breakfast place called Olympia Cafe. He told us it was his favorite place in South Africa to eat breakfast so we had to check it out.

This place was awesome. It was perfect, the food, the wait staff, the other patrons, the atmosphere and the view. We had the best time just hanging out and enjoying all that it had to offer.

After breakfast, we went to explore Kalk Bay. We wandered around and found a bakery, a fishing pier, light house and sea lions.

It wasn't long before it was time to hit the road again. This time to Simon's Town. Simon's Town was a bit bigger then Kalk Bay and we stopped in a few shops to check out all the souvenir stuff. We spent some time checking out the beach and an ice cream shoppe.

We stopped into a welcome center and they advised us to walk down to Boulders Beach. It was a beautiful day so we thought we would go explore.

I am so glad we went. Boulders Beach is the home of The African Penguin, who knew. So we paid the fee and headed down to see the little guys. When I first saw them I was so excited. I felt like I was in the Happy Feet movie. I am sure I made an idiot of myself being so giddy and silly but they were so cute and there were little baby penguins.

It was time to keep heading south if we were going to make it to everything today so we jumped back on the road to go check out Cape Point and Cape of Good Hope. Cape of Good Hope is the most south-western point of the African continent so, of course, we had to check it. But first, we hiked around Cape Point.



Cape of Good Hope from Cape Point

We were able to hike up to the lighthouse and check out all views. We were hoping to hike to Cape of Good Hope but the timing didn't work out. We decided to drive over so we didn't get caught in the dark or stuck in the park over night.

We did get the change to hike around the area for a little while and take in the incredible views. While driving to and from the Cape of Good Hope, we ran into a few more animals.

There were three of these guys and they got really close! We also saw baboons and dassies while we were out and about in the park. The sun was setting and the rain was coming so we decided it was time to head back up the coast to Cape Town. We wanted to take a different route then how we had come down. A few hours into our drive back, we started seeing signs for Chapman's Peak.  We didn't know anything about it but we knew 1.) it was a toll road and 2.) we had to take it to get back to Cape Town. I finally decided to look it up in our Frommer's travel book just miles before we got to it. I read the description to Jed:

Chapman's Peak :

Built between 1915 and 1922, this winding 10km (6 1/4-mile) drive must rate as one of the world's best, with cliffs plunging straight into the ocean, dwarfing the vehicles snaking along its side. Not surprisingly, hundreds of international car commercials have been shot here.

There is nothing like hearing "cliffs plunging straight into the ocean" when you are just learning to drive on the opposite side of the car on the opposite side of the road that you are used to. Pretty sure he was regretting having asked as soon as he heard it. And at this point, we were far past turning back. Jed did a fantastic job maneuvering Chapman's Peak and it was so much fun with incredible views and unforgettable cliffs and over hangs.

Chapman's Peak ended at the start of Hout Bay. So what better place to take a break, relax, laugh about what we had just done and grab some dinner over looking the bay.

We found the perfect place to sit and eat outside watching the sunset, Dunes.

The day flew by and before we knew it, we were driving the late leg of our day trip back to our hotel in Cape Town. Jed did a phenomenal job driving, parallel parking and tackling Chapman's Peak.