Simons Town / Boulders Beach

We visited friends, Jeff and Patty Borden from Harrisonburg, on 10.19.08 and visited their home in Fish Hoek, SA. After a wonderful lunch, we took a drive down to Simons Town and Boulders Beach toward Cape Point. Simons Town is one of the older settlements along False Bay which is the first hint of the Indian Ocean past the Cape of Good Hope. Just south of Simons Town is a beach called Boulders Beach for reasons that will be obvious in a moment:

Here is a beautiful view the view across the bay:

Boulders Beach, while beautiful in its own right, is not most famous for its large rocks. It is most famous for its colony of African Penguins (really…see below).

This rare bird first arrived in 1984 to South Africa and has started several colonies near Cape Town. Boulders Beach has the highest number with several thousand penguins around the area. They used to be called “Jack Ass Penguins” because of the loud braying noise that they make. They were actually relatively quiet for our visit as it was moulting season and many of the penguins were losing their feathers. The moulting period last for 21 days and they cannot swim during that time and thus the pengiuns are relatively quiet.

In addition to penguins we saw other flora and fauna such as:

and this little critter (whose name I can’t remember) that is supposedly related to an elephant although if I was trying to prove the theory of evolution, this is not the example that I would choose:

and these are little body surfing Egyptian Geese who are supposedly a nuisance but are very cute:

Unfortunately due to wind and time, we did not have time to make it all the way down to the Cape of Good Hope just giving us a reason to return to False Bay. Lest you think we were terribly disappointed, we were gently reminded to keep things in perspective: