PENGUINS IN AFRICA! Visiting the Boulders Beach Penguin Colony

This is so cool here, the little guest house that we're staying at is literally surrounded by the penguins. It's right down on the coast and the penguins are coming up at sunset here and they're coming to the bushes where they're going to be spending the night. Cece and I spent three weeks in Southern Africa this July. When most people think of Africa, they think big animals, which is reasonable. However, 45 minutes south of Cape Town live 3,000 African penguins at Boulders Beach. When we saw that the Boulders Beach Hotel was $35 a night, midweek in the wintertime, we jumped at it for the chance to spend one night right next to the penguin colony. We were up well before sunrise, which isn't that early in the winter, to make sure we were the first ones out to greet our friendly neighbors. This is so cool, it's 7.45, the sun is just starting to come up here on a cloudy morning and literally this is our guest house right here behind us. The penguins sleep in the surrounding bushes here, so they're right out the front door. There were penguins everywhere right next to us as we walked down the pathways and trails right next to our hotel. At 8 a.m. we were the first ones to enter the Boulders Beach official area. For $10 you get access to the beach area and the official visitor center area with the elevated catwalks. Nobody here, it's 8 o'clock, it's just us and the penguins. Oh, this is so cool. We loved being down on the sand in the early morning with the sound of the waves. We were flies on the wall watching as penguins emerged from the bushes to hop and waddle their way down to the ocean for their morning swims. There's a magical feeling seeing these iconic animals in nature. African penguins are small, usually weighing from 5 to 8 pounds and standing at just over two feet tall. The backdrop was stunning, the sun peering out occasionally among the rain clouds threatening in the background. While the penguins look funny waddling on land, they're graceful swimmers and are one of the most social birds in the world. It was really fun watching them congregate together in the water, almost like they were part of a daily morning swim club. Finally, we forced ourselves to leave the beach so we could check out the other entrance of the Boulders Beach area. Due to the rain and the fact that it was midweek, we were still among the first people to enter the other entrance as well. Oh, this is so cool. There's so many penguins down here on the beach and there's no one here. It's kind of a misty morning here in the middle of the week so we have the place all to ourselves. It was so much fun watching the dozens of penguins waddle their way right underneath us down to the water for their morning swim session. African penguins form penguin groups to help protect the chicks while members of the groups can go out and feed. We got a laugh out of one of the penguins who continued to dig and fling sand on his unsuspecting neighbors. As the morning carried on, a few more people started arriving and we realized that we had amazingly got in a couple of hours nearly by ourselves with the penguins this morning. It was hard to pull ourselves away. Oh, so much fun spending. Look at him. Look at him waddle. They're so cute. As it's not every day you can spend the morning with your 3,000 penguin neighbors, spending the night right next to the penguins and being able to see them sunset and sunrise all by ourselves was an amazing experience and it was definitely one of the highlights of our time in Southern Africa.