It’s Richard’s birthday!

Cape Town, South Africa

This has to be the best planned birthday surprise ever! Richard ostensibly knows nothing about the arrangements, other than we’ve made some but he doesn’t know what. The rest of us are of course in the know. I apparently promised yesterday to be nice to Richard for the duration of his birthday but I forgot pretty early, only to be reprimanded by him and reminded of my promise. I feel this may be a bit of a long day now! We’re all up and about ready for our 9.30 start. We’ve booked our old friend Alan Scott of Wildcat Tours to drive us around in his minibus for the day so that everyone can take in the scenery and we can all have a drink to celebrate the fact that Richard’s an extra year older now. We set off across Chapman’s Peak, the toll road out of Hout Bay and having stopped for a quick photo half way up, proceed onto the Indian Ocean coast and to Boulders Beach. This is where the famous South African penguins are located and we park up at the beach end of their domain, and take a stroll to the other entrance where the bulk of the walkways and viewing points are. Penguins are pretty entertaining if they’re either coming out of, or going into the sea, but otherwise are quite sedentary, and according to Karen, very cute! Most of our party seem to agree with her, although personally I think they’re pretty unattractive and scruffy close up. There’s quite a bit to see on the walk, and you can smell when you’re getting close to their main residential area. Penguins are a monogamous species that share the parenting duties evenly between both the male and the female. Their nests are mainly in a wooded area just back from the beach chosen so as to protect them from predators. They’ve also been provided with little plastic bottles which look like gas bottles on their side, half buried in the ground, which they use as nests. There’s loads of them in what look like 70’s identical housing estates, so they’ve been helpfully numbered, which I’m sure makes it much easier for the Penguins to distinguish their home from the others around them; “Our address? Oh yes, we live at 90 Smelly Beach Road!” When we get to the entrance we pay our dues, 70 rand for adults, and get our free ‘all you need to know about penguins’ guide. Whilst the walk between the two entrances was quite sheltered from the wind, the walkways to the main viewing beaches are not and we get buffeted and sandblasted as the wind gusts around us. Boulders is a popular tourist destination and there are coach loads of various nationalities fighting their way along the boardwalk. From the way most of them are dressed you’d think they were expecting frost and snow (well they are looking at penguins I suppose) with long trousers and thick jackets, hoods up, scarves – you’d think we were in the Antarctic! Us hardy Yorkshire folk? Shorts, T shirts and flip flops of course, ‘cos it’s summer! Having seen all there was to see we return along the path and enter the area where we can go on the beach, and swim in the sea if we want to. This is where we can get really up close and personal with the penguins, and have a paddle at the same time. Eventually we manage to drag Phil away from taking lots of ‘arty’ photos and back to the transport to stop off for a walk and coffee in Simonstown. Alan tells us he was stationed here for 12 months doing national service and impulsively volunteered for the diving school. This meant that every day at 4 a.m he had to dive off the jetty and swim 2km to a small island known as Noah’s Ark, go round it and swim back! To this day he can’t explain why he volunteered! We’re having a coffee in the sun when a group of African singers in matching shirts rock up and start harmonising. Richard asked them to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ when they came with their collection plate, and they duly obliged, even asking in the song how old he was! After another short stroll amongst the old colonial buildings which make up Simonstown high street we got back in the minibus and headed for lunch at Harbour House in Kalk Bay. Harbour House is pretty special – set on stilts over the ocean, the waves crash into the windows and occasionally go right over the roof! The food is pretty good too, and we all tucked in to some great fish, introducing Richard, Martha, Jenny and Phil to kingklip and yellowtail for the first time. Alan deposited us back in Hout Bay at just before 6 in the evening but celebrations didn’t stop there as Lawrence and Amanda turned up with a carrot ‘birthday’ cake for Richard. This was washed down with some Graham Beck MCC fizz, so that by the time we’d finished everyone was stuffed! We waved a fond farewell to L and A and spent a frustrating evening waiting to see the ‘super moon’ rise over the mountain. It eventually appeared about 9.30 – was it worth the wait? The photo I took doesn’t do it justice is all I’ll say.