Sunday morning, we woke up and decided to take a drive down to some of the "must-do" activities south of the city center. First, we went to Boulders Beach to check out the African penguin colony. You take a boardwalk out to the beach where they are just hanging out, waiting to be photographed. The beach is absolutely beautiful and the water is clear and turquoise. I have to say they picked a good place to call "home", though I was disappointed that none of them wanted to tap dance with me.
Insert unnecessarily large quantity of cute penguin photos here:
After my desires for penguin photos were fully satisfied, we got back in the car and drove down to the Cape of Good Hope. Now we will admit there is not much here. Arguably the highlight of the drive was seeing an ostrich just hanging out right after we entered the National Park. Unfortunately, we were driving and I didn't have the camera armed and ready because, well, I didn't expect to be surprised by two ostriches on the side of the road. We got to the park and walked up the path. Theres a full service restaurant and a pretty lighthouse there. The scenery is beautiful and it's definitely a check off on the bucket list. Searched heavily for our ostrich friends on the way out but they must've found someone else to surprise.
We drove back to the hotel, and had a quiet dinner there. Watched some TV in the room with the intention of taking a nap to wake up for the Super Bowl. Kickoff was at 1:30am local time. Dan managed to power through just fine. I watched pregame, fell asleep, woke up at halftime, and managed to get about 5 minutes into the third quarter before I was out. I woke up again to Dan closing the computer and managed to ask "who won?" before clonking out again. Yay, Super Bowl. (This is arguably the worst thing about living in Africa. American sports are supremely difficult to watch due to the time change.)
Monday was our last day in Cape Town. It was also the clearest and least windy. Off to Table Mountain we went. We took the aerial cableway and I actually did alright. The cars are round to limit wind resistance and the floor inside actually rotates so that everyone gets a chance to take pictures. Turning down Dan's request to hold his feet while he hung out to take photos, I stuck to the middle. The views are incredible though. The cars hold about 60 people and come every 4 minutes or so. We walked around quite a bit at the top and took pictures back down to the city. It really is a unique mountain.
View of Table Mountain from our hotel room
From the top looking back down at the city
Headed back to V&A Waterfront that evening. We had walked past a sign for a Lego exhibit called "The Art of the Brick". Dan grew up a HUGE Lego fan and I enjoyed them quite a bit myself, so we decided that we should check it out. The exhibit was fantastic. I thought Dan would be pumped but I was totally in awe of the artist's work. His name is Nathan Sawaya and I had seen him on Ellen so I recognized his piece on the promotional sign. He used to be a lawyer who worked with Legos in the evenings to decompress from his job. Eventually, he got commissioned to do some pieces and one thing led to another. He talked about how important art was to him as a kid and how he works with charities/schools to ensure that this is not taken away from today's youth. I bought a shirt that says "art is not optional". Having grown up as a dancer, enjoying making crafts and painting, it really spoke to me. After the exhibit, we had a nice seafood dinner and made our way back to pack up for our trip back to Maputo.
Here are some of the photos of Mr. Sawaya's Lego pieces:
Us hanging out with a man made of Legos
Yes, that's Edward Munch's "The Scream" made of Legos
Dan in front of a Lego T-Rex skeleton (approx 80,000 Legos)
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