The Penguins at Boulders Beach

There’s some­thing very pecu­liar about stand­ing on a sandy shoreline, bask­ing in the South African sum­mer sun while gaz­ing out across the crys­tal blue waters of the Indian Ocean, only to encounter a group of pen­guins wad­dling past your beach towel on their way to hav­ing a dip.

Well at Boulders Beach, a National Park, just out­side Simon’s Town (en-route to Cape Point), nature has been play­ing the strangest tricks on sun wor­shipers for some time.

Boulders Beach is home to the ‘Jackass’ African pen­guin, which has been hanging out along the Southern African coast for… er… donkey’s years, in more recent times liv­ing shoulder to knee-cap with the local human pop­u­la­tion of Simon’s Town.

Named “jack­ass” after their dis­tinct­ive Eeyore imper­son­a­tions, they occur in only 27 other sites, includ­ing Robben Island, and des­pite their large num­bers at Boulder’s (some 3000), they are very much endangered.

They espe­cially hit the head­lines back in June 2000, when some 1,400 tonnes of heavy fuel oil leaked from the bulk car­rier Treasure off Cape Town prompt­ing a massive res­cue oper­a­tion. Luckily, an over­whelm­ing num­ber of Capetonians and tour­ists rushed to the res­cue, and dur­ing the fol­low­ing months 10 000 pen­guins were indi­vidu­ally caught and treated successfully.

So, on your visit you might wish to donate a few cents towards the mar­ine wild­life char­ity Sancob, who con­tinue to be instru­mental in pro­tect­ing and rais­ing aware­ness of the penguin’s plight.

The site is made up of two inter­con­nec­ted beaches: Foxy Beach – where you can view the entire colony from a newly con­struc­ted board­walk, and Boulders Beach — where you can actu­ally swim along­side them, or at least try – they are extremely fast! Practically every­where you look, behind every rock and bush, you’ll find them stand­ing around, as if wait­ing for a bus. Children will abso­lutely adore their antics, and the adults won’t be able to put their cam­eras down.

Never in your life, and cer­tainly out­side of Antarctica, did you ever ima­gine that you could get so close to such won­der­ful and curi­ous creatures. There are only a few places in the world that you’d come across a sign warn­ing motor­ists to be on the look out for pen­guins hid­ing out under their cars!

While you are at it, keep an eye out for the res­id­ent ‘dassies’, one of the cutest and cud­dli­est little fury crit­ters ima­gin­able (a bit like an extremely large guinea pig) who can often be found bask­ing in the sun beside the walk­ways. They seem to love pos­ing for the cameras.

There is an inform­a­tion centre, selling all-manner of pen­guin mer­chand­ise, (jack­ets, toys, post­cards, videos), com­plete with an adja­cent cinema, and I would very much recom­mend watch­ing at least a few minutes of ‘City Slickers’, an award win­ning wild­life doc­u­ment­ary about the extraordin­ary pen­guin / human co-habitation that con­sti­tutes nor­mal every­day life for the res­id­ents of Simon’s Town (screened con­tinu­ally through­out the day).

Useful Links:
Visit the SANCCOB Website at http://www.sanccob.co.za/
Simons Town Accommodation
Simons Town Attractions
Cape Town Attractions
Cape Town Accommodation

Photo Gallery — Penguins at Boulders Beach — click to view enlarge­ments