Penguins of South Africa

AFRICA!!  The wait is finally over! 🙂

I’m thrilled to be finally starting my series on South Africa, and I wanted to start with what I thought people would expect – animal photos – but perhaps not the animals you would initially think of.  South Africa is full of diversity; from its people, cultures, landscapes, food, and yes, even the animals that roam around.  I feel like Holly and I got to see a whole bunch while we were there, but in reality we’re just scratching the surface of the African continent (heck, really just scratching the surface of South Africa!).

One area that Holly and I were particularly excited to visit was the southern coast of South Africa, near Cape Town.  Cape Town itself is a beautiful city, but it’s really the country side I was most excited to see.  We took the good advice of our friends Chad and Kimberly, and went to a small town called Hermanus.  Hermanus is partway between Cape Town, and the southern-most tip of Africa, and is just a gorgeous coastal town that was super quaint; we loved it!  On the way there from Cape Town we decided to take a little stop at the Stony Point Nature Preserve, which is home to the largest breeding colony of African Penguins in the world.  Pretty cool stuff!  These little guys were everywhere! 

Stony Point is situated in Betty’s Bay, another cute little coastal town, and as I was taking pictures of the penguins, I decided I wanted show the “place” along with the birds.  After a few misses (some of the penguins were a little shy), I found this guy that was nice enough to pose for me while I composed a shot with the mountains and the town in the background.  Such a beautiful spot.

More Africa next week!

–Dan Thompson