
With a short window until we had to be at Cape Town airport to head to Namibia, we had time to visit the classic Boulders Beach to see a colony of African Penguins which are unfortunately an endangered species, in 1910 there was an estimated 1.5 million African Penguins, but only around 10% remained at the end of the 20th century. The uncontrolled harvesting of penguin eggs (as a source of food) and guano scraping nearly drove the species to extinction. We arrived later in the morning as we had a slower start to the day after the previous day’s wine tasking, stopping en route in Stellenbosch for some brunch and excellent coffee. This unfortunately meant that we didn’t have time to head down to swim in boulders beach, just having enough time to go and see the Penguins from the boardwalks over Foxy Beach. It really was quite remarkable seeing penguins in their natural habitat, especially as this area is so surrounded by a residential area. The species of the bird is Spheniscus demersus, and this colony has grown from two breading pairs in 1982 to around 2200 penguins. Read the full article…






