The Animals

One of the things that people most often want to know about our time here is what animals we have seen (in addition to Abby and Mark's work, more on that in an upcoming blog, and Leah's school, see her blog for that!).  

In Cape Town itself, and the surrounding area, there are no big game animals such as lions and elephants.  But there is an incredible diversity of marine and ocean life.  We have seen dolphins, seals and even an occasional whale.  Recently, we spent an afternoon at Boulders Beach, which has a large colony of African penguins, part of an unusual mainland colony of just over 2,000 breeding pairs.  They have endangered status due to declining numbers and various threats including habitat destruction.

These are pictures of the big rocks that gave the beach its name ... and this is where the penguins live.  

Mostly they are walking around or hiding under rocks, but we also saw some swimming.  We watched them for an entire afternoon - as the sun started to set, penguins came out of their hiding places in the rocks and walked up and down the beach ...

and even jumped up on the walls ....

 What's this?  That's no penguin!  This is a 'rock dassie'.  They are found living in many rocky places along the coastline in and around Cape Town.  Some are big, some are small, but you'll never guess what their most closely related to:

The elephant!