Peter Meets the Police

After breakfast, we hopped into our Toyota Yaris and set off for the Cape of Good Hope. We accidentally made a few right (correct) turns and wound our way down route M5 to Muizenberg then onto Simon's Town where we stopped for some penguin viewing. Advice from our friendly parking lot attendant indicated we should bypass the visitor's center, walk an extra 100 yards and view the penguins without paying ZAR 54. Special thanks to Pete's dad for lending us his super duper camera -- it takes fantastic pictures, check out our new slide show on the right.

Back on the road, we happily slowed down for (read: almost ran over) a family of baboons that was taking it's time crossing the road. Thankful that they didn't jump on the car and make off with our antenna (like they do at Six Flags), we carried on south to the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve.



The Cape of Good Hope is unbelievably beautiful (thanks to all of you who recommended it!!). Picture an amalgam of RT 1 in Northern California, the alpine zone of the White Mountains, and the colorful fauna of Martha's Vineyard -- then amp it up. We hiked up to the Cape Point Lighthouse, past an abandoned WWII radar station (which made us think of our friend Will, who's working at a radar station literally on the other side of the globe in Thule, Greenland -- dare you to Google map that one).

After we made our way back down, Peter took a shot at driving and we snaked our way up M65 and M6, past some rogue ostriches, back towards Cape Town. He did better than me on the left side of the road. It hurts to write it, but he did. Though we both invariably try to use the windshield wiper lever as a turn signal...

On the way back north we went up the west side of the Cape, through the Misty Cliffs and past the Kommetjie Lighthouse. The sun was setting and we can confirm that African skies are pretty sweet.



After some winding about downtown Cape Town, we arrived at the V&A Wharf for some food. Pete found a gear store we had to peruse before we settled down for dinner -- the gear was awesome, but we haven't found an excuse to buy anything yet.

Since we're in South Africa, naturally we selected a Portugese/Turkish restaurant. Dinner was great, but, about the title of this post -- apparently Cape Town is pretty notorious for its drunk driving checkpoints. In fact, we reached one just as they were setting up. Pete was driving, sober as the day he was born...but one of the dozen or so officers stepped in front of our Yaris and signaled for us to stop. Confused, we rolled down our window, and the officer said "Good evening sir, do you know where the head lights are on this vehicle???" Unfortunately, he had forgotten to turn them on. We remedied the situation and were on our way.

That's all for today! Tomorrow, we go wine tasting...