As the boat pulled away from the marina, our rusty currency conversion skills finally kicked in.  We just boarded a boat with our 3 year old to enter the foggy open waters around Cape Town for the alarmingly low price of 14 US dollars, total…is it too late to put on a few more life jackets?

It was a few days before our safari, but just because we were in “the big city” didn’t mean we couldn’t find snuggly wildlife, right? On Christmas morning, we loaded into the car seeking out the end of the world. Just an hour South of Cape Town lies Boulder’s Beach, a tiny spit of sand where African penguins live and squawk to their heart’s content on the sandy shores. Having visited their cousins in Antarctica, I can tell you these guys are the smarter of the crew. Their days are filled shunning tourists and splashing in the warm ocean, not dodging hungry seals and calving glaciers with 80,000 of their cold friends.

The Boy, of course, attempted to lure one our way to pet, however Mini seems to have a healthy dose of my skepticism and refused to help in this plot. The signs along the walk noting the penguins WILL BITE did not dissuade the boy. I knew this was the trip I should have finally insisted on the rabies vaccine for him…[Ed. So cuddly! Penguins on the beach!]

Our ill plotted boat trip from above was a few days later — just a few kilometers south of where we were staying was Houts Bay, where a colony of seals live just off the shore. The stinky rock (Duiker Island) a 15 minute boat ride away was home to about five hundred of the slick animals, sunning themselves after realizing the boat wasn’t going to deposit them some fish, or tiny boys, for a snack. The seals didn’t get close enough for the Boy to pet any, much to his displeasure, however as we returned to dock, there was a seal on shore happily beside a local man feeding him fish. And for the low, low price of 10 Rand (or 66 cents US…) you could come beside it for pictures and a little pet. [Ed. This kid was not impressed by the seal.] Definitely getting us all the rabies vaccine before our next trip…