Les Buwalda, our intrepid driver, took us to the area to the east of the Cape of good Hope and Cape Point. There, along the shores of False Bay where the sailing ships of old were often trapped by the prevailing winds, lives a colony of Magellanic Penguins. The South Africans call the penguins Jackass penguins because of their braying-like call. They are warm water penguins who live in temperate climates instead of the Antarctic amid the ice and snow.

Penguin Colony                                                    Penguin  up close

    
   Penguin Bay                                                        Penguins on the rocks

 One has to drive through a residential neighborhood to get to the cove where the penguins have taken up residence. The government has built a series of board walks out to the beach and there is a booth guarding the walk, placed there to collect admission to the area. The funds raised are used to maintain the walks whose purpose is to keep people from getting too close to the little birds and disturbing their nesting grounds.

The colony contains hundreds of the tuxedo clad little birds. The colony used to live on the island of Madagascar off the east coast of South Africa. For some unknown reason they had packed their bags and moved to the shores of False Bay some time ago. Perhaps the fishing was no longer good around Madagascar. In any event they took up permanent residence along the shores of the Cape. They are fun little birds to watch standing only about twenty four inches tall. They waddle around on the beach where they burrow into the sand to make their nests. The sound of their braying is remarkable with everyone talking at once.

At some time in the not too distant past, an oil tanker had spilled crude oil off the coast of the Cape threatening the Penguin's habitat. The South Africans, who are good stewards of their wild life, gathered volunteers to go to the beach and round up the penguins, which proved challenging to catch. The volunteers had to wear heavy gloves which the penguins shredded with their powerful beaks. They  deserved a medal for catching those birds and saving them from the oil spill. Once they were rounded up, they then shipped them off to Madagascar for a little holiday while the oil spill was cleaned up. By the time it was safe for them to return they had swum back to their beach on False Bay on their own. They had no interest in returning to Madagascar, for reasons only the penguins knew. It was an interesting sight to see the penguins in their natural habitat. They seem to have little fear of humans, in fact they are as curious of us as we are of them.  

Wire and Paper Gemsbok Sculpture                 Wire and paper Kudus

The wire sculptures shown above are on the grounds of the Spier Winery. The Spier Winery also is host to a Cheetah rescue program saving abandoned babies and injured Cheetahs.  These animals, once they become accustomed to humans to humans, cannot be returned to the wild.

           Petting Zoo for Cheetahs                            Cheetah prowling the fence 

On our last evening in Cape town we contacted an artist who lives there whose speciality is making wire sculptures of African animals. He covers them with white paper. My wife, Peggy, had purchased a full size head of a Kudu Antelope he had made. We hung it over the fireplace mantle in our "African" room and put a light inside. The African room was where we kept all of the African artifacts she had brought home over the almost two decades of travel to and from South Africa.

The wire sculptures shown above are on the grounds of the Steen Winery.  

Michael Methven is the wire sculpture artist's name. He makes full size versions of entire antelopes, as well as other animals, in wire and paper. We dined on farm raised wild game with Michael and his wife that last evening at another wonderful restaurant in the Steenberg Winery not far from Groot winery in the Constancia district. The next day we returned to Johannesburg and my flight home to St Louis where I was employed. My trip to South Africa had been the adventure of a lifetime.