June 12th - 15th, 2016 - Cape Town, South Africa

We flew Mango from Johannesburg to Cape Town on the 12th and headed to our hotel, The Spier which is a whole lot more than a hotel. The Spier has a farm, winery, eagle sanctuary (for rescues), conference center, multiple restaurants, etc. really plush by our standards and quite reasonable at the current exchange rate of 15R to 1$. Anyway, we settled into our room and got dinner with Greg, Magdel and the kids. The next morning Dylan was really excited about, we headed out to Boulders Beach, part of the Table Mountain National Park, and where the african penguins are. Here are Dylan and Linda at one of the overlooks .....

 and a “What you lookin’ at” close up ..... 

We also drove the Chapman Peak Drive which is crazy narrow and drops off almost vertically to the sea. Being a cyclist I would love to ride the road, being a driver I was appalled that there was two way traffic, much less several cyclists on the road. After lunch we headed to a beach to just hang out. Dylan was very interested in hunting for shells ....

There was a park at the beach with a seesaw that Dylan, Amalie and Julien wanted to play on, being an odd number Linda helped Dylan out to balance Greg and Magdel’s kids .....

The next morning we checked out the Eagle Encounter at Spier which was really cool. We started with the feeding show where several different birds and owls were brought out (a few of the birds landed on audience hands or heads as directed by the trainer) finishing with a Cape Vulture .....

Later we walked around and looked at all the birds. We finished out at the owls, where there were several you could pet (former pets) as well as  an enclosure that you could go into with several owls ..... 

They also had a children’s playground where there were pigs and an Emu that seemed pretty skeptical of Dylan ..... 

In the afternoon we headed to the Cheetah Outreach Center where they educate local farmers about better ways to protect their livestock from cheetahs and house several different cats. We had the opportunity to see them feed several of the animals including Jackals and the Cerivets ..... 

After looking at the different animals we got to have a Cheetah encounter (they are supper soft and have an interesting purr), heres hoping it was also fed earlier .....

On our final day in Cape Town we headed to the Two Oceans Aquarium in the water front area of town. The hope was to see the shark exhibit which had white sharks among others. As you notice I said “had” because that exhibit closed a month before and the replacement, without sharks, was not to open until the day after we were there. Dylan still got a kick out of the penguin exhibit where in addition to the African Penguins they also had Rockhoppers and he got to watch a feeding. After the Aquarium we walked through the shops and had an early dinner at the Den Anker restaurant where the kids occupied themselves they way kids do these days ..... 

There were several different sculptures in the waterfront area including this one that Dylan had to get his photo with while holding one of his own .....

and while the weather did not allow up to hike or take the tram to the top of the landmark Table Mountain here is a shot from waterfront looking up at it .....

The next morning it was off to Rocklands for two weeks of climbing ...