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Cape Town

A look at a few of Cape Town's most beautiful attractions with guest photo enthusiast Antonio Nevada Martinez

Por Crystal Stafford

05 de June de 2016

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Table mountain

Keep close to Nature‘s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean. -John Muir

A plateau between heaven and earth

Since António de Saldanha, the first European to land in Table Bay, ascended the mountain in 1503 and named it Taboa do Cabo (Table of the Cape), Table Mountain has become one of the biggest attractions in South Africa. Since the park opening in 1929, over 16 million people have found their way to the top to enjoy its breathtaking views.

Antonio snaps a picture of a Dassie, the closest living relative to the African Elephant.

We found our way to the top via a cable car. It swept us up the side of the mountain and dropped us 302 m (991 ft) above sea level. Table Mountain is a natural world heritage site and one of 7 natural wonders of the world. This mountain’s level plateau reaches 3 kilometers (2 miles) from side to side, with horizons that melt into the clear blue sky and cliffs that plunge into the indigo waters of the Atlantic.

Work to connect yourself to the allness of life — instead of identifying with the smallness of it — and you‘ll awaken to a greatness already living within you that is no more bothered by the little things in life than a mountain is made miserable by the rain that falls upon it. -Guy Finley

This mountain is part of the sandstone mountain range that stretches from Signal Hill in the North to the Cape Point in the south. Table Mountain’s flat plateau is a remnant of a once much larger, yet softer, mountain range that over the years has eroded down to its sandstone skeleton. In fact, the top plateau of this syncline mountain was once the bottom of a valley.

And then their were penguins

Visiting the colony of African Penguins at Boulders Beach was one of the highlights of our short stay in Cape Town. African Penguins, also known as Jack Ass penguins (not for their personality but for the loud noises they make), can only be found on the southwestern coast of Africa, in colonies dotting 24 islands that spread north as far as Namibia.

a tale of adventurous lovers

This particular colony of penguins is the result of an adventurous couple that waddled up to Foxy Beach in 1983 and decided to call it home. Over 30 years later, due to breeding and immigration, the colony has grown to more than 3,000 penguins. Scientist reason that the birds immigrated due to an increase in fish populations since the banning of purse seine fishing in False Bay.

A mother or father penguin stands next to its molting chic.

These chics will fast for the entire 20 days of their molting process because their feathers are not yet waterproof.

love is eternal

At least for penguins. Maybe that’s why some say love is for the birds. Perhaps love can at least be inspired by them. These penguins live in monogamous pairs for many years. The only thing that breaks them is death or a failure to breed. Not only do they stick together, they also work together to raise their young. They share equally in the 40-day incubation of their eggs and, once the eggs have hatched, they drop the chics off at the colony babysitter‘s place, or crèche and head to sea together to forage for fish to feed their young.

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don't let their love fade away

In 1910 there were an estimated 1.5 million African Penguins in southwestern Africa. 100 years later only 55,000 remain. This dramatic decline is the result of habitat destruction, overfishing, oil spills and other marine pollution, and the impacts of global warming on fish stocks and fish movement. If the decline is not halted the African Penguin is expected to be extinct within 15 years.

Be part of the movement to halt the extinction of African Penguins: visit SANCCOB’s website.

SANCCOB is the leading non-profit working to rescue and rehabilitate African Penguins in South Africa. If you’d like to be part of the movement to halt the extinction of these precious birds, visit SANCCOB’s website to learn about the many ways you can take action, including adopting a penguin, like I did (meet my adopted penguin Jill below).

A modeling exercise conducted in 2003 by the University of Cape Town found that SANCCOB’s rehabilitation efforts have resulted in the current population being 19 percent larger than it would have been in the absence of their efforts.

Meet Jill, she is one of two penguins I adopted. She was rescued from an oil spill but never made a full recovery. She now lives at SANCOBB.

the cape of good hope

“Perhaps it was history that ordained that it be here, at the Cape of Good Hope, that we should lay the foundation stone of our new nation. For it was here at this Cape, over three centuries ago, that there began the fateful convergence of the peoples of Africa, Europe and Asia on these shores.” -Nelson Mandela

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THE ALMOST SOUTHERNMOST POINT

The Cape of Good Hope is thought by many to be the southernmost tip of Africa, where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans converge. This is a misconception. The actual southernmost point is 200 kilometers (120 miles) southeast at Cape Agulhas. However, when sailors made the long journey around the tip of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope marked a psychologically important part of the journey where the ship began to finally turn east.

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The Cape of Good Hope was originally named the Cape of Storms by the first European explorer to reach the cape, Bartolomeu Dias, in 1948. John II of Portugal later renamed it because of the hope that was inspired by the opening of a sea route between India and the East. For me, the name represents the hope that the beauty of this place can inspire inside you.