Friday, March 2

Depending on time of year, you are not guaranteed to see many of the 2,122 penguins that are said to live near Boulders Beach in False Bay – part of the Indian Ocean.

It didn’t take us long to know that this was a good day for sighting penguins.

Part of the reason the place was full of penguins was that it was mating and nesting season.

We saw a dassie close up – even before we saw a penguin up close.

From the Internet: The rock hyrax (Procavia capensis), also called rock badger and Cape hyrax, is commonly referred to in South African English as the dassie. It is a medium-sized terrestrial mammal, with short ears and tail.

The area is beautiful – with lots of rocks, water, penguins and wind.

In the first area of the walkway, we saw lots of nesting penguins.

The best area for seeing the penguins was following the second parking lot.

The African Penguins are also called jackass penguins because they sound like braying donkeys.

Lizards and similar critters became a common sight to us as we visited South Africa.

Because it was mating season, there were many pairs of penguins walking around, following and chasing each other, building nests and sitting on nests.

They have interesting feet.

We did get close to many of them.

Another dassie

African penguins are the world’s smallest penguins.

As far as I can tell, these are Black Oyster Catchers

I read that the number of penguins you see in the daytime is small compared to what you see at night.

This appears to be a Cape Orb Spider

These two were on the path in front of us.

Ian running after his hat – after the wind blew it off his head.

There were a lot of beautiful things for sale in the main entrance area.

Jere and Jesse bartering over an item.

We arrived back in Muizenberg in time for supper at Friday’s Market in Bluebird Garage and an evening walk on the beach. More about that tomorrow night.