Olifantsbos Trip!

This week, Jo invited me to come with her family and some friends to Cape Peninsula for two nights. Below you can see a map of where Cape Town is, and where we stayed (Cape Point Nature Reserve). We rented a cottage directly on one of the beaches, called Olifantsbos. 'Olifant' means elephant in Afrikaans, and 'bos' means bush, or wild.

The first afternoon there, we took a walk down the beach from our cottage. We saw lots of birds, and a baby seal, too! We came across a huge washed up piece of bone. Later, we found that it was a whale vertabrae!

We also saw a shipwreck on our walk. I heard the story about how many ships would crash near this point, because of the weather at this particular location. Due to the two bodies of water coming together at this point, the winds could be quite strong, and many ships crashed because of this. The bay on the inside of the Cape is called 'False Bay', and this is because sailors that would come around the tip of Africa would mistake this bay for the other side, the Atlantic. Below is a picture of some of the wreckage we found while walking.

The next day, we spent some time on Olifantsbos beach and then Buffel's Bay. Buffel's Bay was another beach on the bay side of the Cape, and had a large tidal pool to swim in. I didn't actually do too much swimming, because the water was a lot cooler than I was used to! For example, Buffel's Bay water temperature was around 66°F - much colder than Gulf Coast waters in the summer!

After Buffel's Bay, we drove to Cape Point. Cape Point is the southernmost tip of the nature preserve, but contrary to popular belief, not the southernmost point in Africa. This title belongs to Cape Agulhas, which is about 100 miles south of Cape Town. Another common misconception is that Cape Point is where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet. This also happens at Cape Agulhas, not at Cape Point. At Cape Point, the Atlantic waters meet with the False Bay waters, as you can see here. To the right is the Atlantic Ocean, and to the left is False Bay.

On our second evening at the cottage, we went on a hike to see the sunset. We hiked for about an hour or so, and saw the beautiful sunset over the Olifantsbos beach as we stood on top of the mountain.

There are lots of native flora and fauna in the park as well. Over 2,000 different flowering plant species are within the park perimeter. Fynbos is one plant species unique to the Cape, with many different subspecies. The King Protea is the national plant of South Africa, and we saw many of these plants while hiking.

There were also so many different kinds of animals we saw throughout our trip! Ostriches and buck roam around freely, and seals can be seen in the water. We even saw a baby seal on our first night as we checked out the shipwreck. The stars of the show, however, were the baboons. Specifically, they are Chacma baboons, and there are 11 troops that roam the park with about 375 total baboons. I was warned to keep the windows and doors to the cottage closed, because they will break in and steal any food they can get their hands on! We did end up coming across a troop on our early morning beach hike, but luckily they stayed away and didn't bother us. On our way out, we saw another troop, and I got a nice picture of a baby and mom together!

I had such a great time on this vacation, and I was so grateful that Jo invited me to come with her. I learned so much about Cape Town, and I can't wait to keep having adventures like these!