Besides the flowers in the Helderberg nature reserve we also saw a variety of birds, including the two weaver birds shown below (male and female respectively).

At the nearby Morgenster and Verglegen wine estates we did some wine and olive tasting and enjoyed the incredible gardens, which hosted the bee and beetle pictured below.

Two days ago we drove out to Somerset West to visit the beautiful Helderberg nature reserve—full of flowering fynbos. During our last visit, we saw very few protea in bloom… returning in the early summer has certainly made a difference in the amount of flowers!

The pictures below are of a pincushion and giant protea.

And a broad-leaf sugarbush.

Hope everyone is having a great Christmas! It’s warm here, and we got to open our presents at least 7 hours earlier than everyone in the Eastern Time Zone, so Christmas in Cape Town is pretty sweet :)

We’ve been busy with Christmas stuff the last few days and have stayed around Cape Town. However, we have still managed to see some amazing sites. On Christmas Eve we drove out to Cape Point:

and the Cape of Good Hope (just north of the point)

A shot of Simons Town from the scenic drive enroute to the point

On the way home we saw four separate troops of Chacma baboons!

One of our favorite places in Cape Town is the World of Birds in Hout Bay. During our second visit, we spent about three hours enjoying the company of a variety of birds…

In one of the aviaries, a hadeda ibis took a liking to my shoes… he protected his find when others walked by, including a German lady who let out a hearty shriek when her toes were nibbled! Thankfully, mine were protected.

This cast of characters were among the hundreds of birds we saw—an eagle, an owl, and a stork. I’ll get the specifics later when I go through all my shots of informational signage!

I’m a big fan of sunsets, and so far, our trip has provided a number of beautiful sunsets for my photographic pleasure. Below is a shot from Kommetjie Beach Thursday night.

Earlier in the day I took a shot of the town of Hout Bay

Later that evening night I tried a long exposure shot - this is one of my first attempts, also of Hout Bay.

In the last few days we’ve visited two game parks, seen three spectacular mountain passes, and tasted wine at several different wineries in the Cape Winelands region. Leandra has probably doubled the amount of mussels she’s eaten in her lifetime, and Eric has taken ~1800 photos so far. :)

Obviously we have a tremendous amount of photos to sort through, but here are a few of our favorites from the two game parks, Buffelsfontein and Aquila.

Zebra at Buffelsfontein.

A baby rhino with her protective mother—there were two other rhino nearby as well. They were quite relaxed around the vehicles so we were able to get quite close.

Sleepy lions at Aquila—we were approximately 30 feet from these cats! There was one more closer to the vehicle that was watching us very closely…

We also saw Cape buffalo, hippos, ostrich, kudu, eland, springbok (many, many springbok), bontebok, giraffes, meerkats, and elephants, oh my!

We arrived in Cape Town after an eleven hour flight, which was preceeded by an eight hour (waaay too long) layover in London. My aunt and two cousins met us at the airport and we took the long scenic way home to drop off our luggage.

We revisted Simon’s Town for lunch with the penguins (okay, not quite) but many tourists pay to walk on the same beach the penguins frequent, and just a few yards down the birds are chilling out near a free parking lot. Sweet.

That evening we walked down to the beach with my uncle Doug. Not fifteen minutes before this he was telling us about a sea otter he’s seen only twice the entire time he’s lived here. Now, guess who appeared on the beach for us?

The sunset was also beautiful, of course.

Today we took it easy… breakfast at the mall (Eric had the most gigantic panini sandwich ever), shopping for some foodstuffs (photos below of the particularly different options), and then a drink at the pub down the street. Cody’s band even played for us this evening—a full live band in my aunt’s living room!

We have a busy couple of days coming up, but we’ll try and post again soon.

We leave for Cape Town tonite from JFK, finally arriving early Thursday morning (hopefully none the worse for wear!).

Posts while we’re gone are likely to be sporadic, but we’ll post when able.

Postscript: Right now we’re posting from JFK after finally finding a network connection that works. Sidewalk to gate took approximately 10 minutes so now we’ve got 2.5 hours to kill in the airport… and 24 hours till Cape Town. Phew.

Being a bit of a dork, I thought I’d post about some of the toys I’m taking with me on our trip:

On the upper left is a creative zen vision w for watching movies and listening to mp3s on the plane, currently loaded with 15 movies and ~1,000 songs. The other benefit to the vision w is a compact flash slot, which will let me download and view photos from my camera while on the go. Below the vision is our water-resistant pentax optio wpi, a great little camera that easily fits in your pocket. The camera bag on the right holds the macro lens, extra cards, etc for our canon rebel xt, which I was using to take the pic. Not shown is my laptop which will (hopefully) make everything work together :)