Penguin hunting

Place: Cape town

Tunes: Nightwish, Armin van Buuren

The new stickers are on and we are good to go.

Scenery from the morning.

Some old planes were also looking for whales.

Closeup.

We found a penguin.

Many penguins actually.

In the mid-day sun also birds rest.

More of the colony.

And still more.

These guys would fit right in.

Professional adventure motorcyclists just take the helmet off and go for a swim. Ride off immediately after.

The coastal road was full of stops like this one for taking pictures.

Pictures do not do the coastline justice.

The waterfront.

Nothing is allowed in this building. Not even trainers!

The famous clocktower on the waterfront.

After last evenings partying this morning was easy. Scenic routes (of dear, here we go again) to Cape town. Now that the Cape is conquered, we will try to find a penguin to take a picture of. These two things have been the overall goal of this whole trip for me.

And penguins we did find! Quite a lot of them actually. Along the costal whale watching route there happened to be a penguin colony. It was of course fenced off and payment was demanded to see the colony. No penguins were seen outside the fenced area even if they were quite cramped inside it. Clever them penguins. It would seem that they are not that active in the middle of the day, like most of the wild animals we saw before. Apparently you can also spot whales from the shore but we did not see any.

So, that’s two boxes ticked out of two. Mission accomplished.

After this penguin excursion we headed to Cape Town on some beach roads. This particular road was absolutely perfect. Rocky beaches, steep cliffs, perfect tarmac, perfect weather and amazing scenery to ride through. It was not unlike Norway, but the scenery was not as desolate and you got to ride higher up on the roads cut into the steep stone walls. The 50km we rode on this road was magnificent and it was the best road of this trip, no doubt about that. The music complemented the scenery beautifully and I can recommend this combination to everyone.

Tarmac can indeed bring you happiness, but too much traffic here unfortunately, so no racing in this scenery. This was an excellent way to finish the motorcycling on this trip.

As we got closer to Cape Town (and the road turned inland), the road got ”ordinary” and eventually boring and the traffic got heavier. Not far from the city there are just miles and miles of slums and the motorway went straight through them. In Cape Town itself the scenery is excellent and is dominated by Table Mountain. It is mostly covered in clouds, or clouds are kind of ”rolling off” the mountain. The traffic is not too bad but as there are a lot of cars, one has to look where one is going. The hotel is nice. 

This place is still in Africa unfortunately and Jukka had to file a report over some money missing from his wallet after a housekeeper had visited the room.

The restaurant where we went for dinner was basically a hippie paradise of some sort with an African twist. Usually I avoid this kind of places and encourage others to do so by throwing Molotov cocktails through the windows, but not now. At least the place was remotely interesting with some made up ethnic food. I was a bit pissed off as I am still looking for a place to change my dollars to Rand as I have too many of the former and none of the latter.

Many jolly speeches were made and the wine was good. We all agreed that there are worse ways to spend ten weeks and that we did a good job in breaking so many traffic rules, regulations and speed limits without getting caught.

Tomorrow awe will have to say sad goodbyes to the bikes as they will be shipped to Helsinki in a container. On the shopping list I have a silver marker and a set of Kudu antlers, so it will be a busy morning.