Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

Yesterday was a pretty chill day for us. We hung around the cottage for the morning before heading to the beach for a few hours. Charlie and I finished up Charlie and the Chocolate Factory while the girls (and Jacob) napped in the afternoon. We ended the day with dinner at Wendy’s house.

Today ended up being a bit touristy than we had initially thought. We decided to head to Boulders Beach to see some penguins and then when the kids all fell asleep en route we figured we would just drive all the way to the Cape of Good Hope since it was only an extra 30 minutes.

We hadn’t done any research at all on the Cape of Good Hope. We knew it was not the most southern tip of Africa (common misconception) so we assumed we would just drive down to a lighthouse where there’d be some pretty views. We have been to Cape Agulhas, the actual southern most tip, and it is really just a walking path with a sign. Turns out the fake tip gets a lot more attention.

The Cape of Good Hope was a whole thing. It’s a national park so you have to pay to enter and it turns out they’ve blocked off quite a large section to preserve it. The tip itself has a restaurant, cable car, curio shop, scary baboons and about nine million tour buses. We should have known it was not our thing when we hit a lineup to get in to the park. By then we had already committed to go, and Nora had pooped all over her car seat so we needed to spend some time out of the car.

Now don’t get me wrong, it was stunning. The views were spectacular and they had what I’m sure are marvellous walking trails. Problem is, we have three kids who do not enjoy being out in the heat as we learned at the lion park. Plus, someone got scratched by a baboon at the restaurant just after we left, so it was a relatively short visit.

We headed back to Simon’s town and Boulders Beach to check out the penguins. The kids truthfully were more excited by the ice cream and the beach then they were by the birds but it was fun all the same.