After watching the awakening of dawn from my desk here we saw it end behind Table Mountain from the Victoria and Albert waterfront.  A spectacular day that made us feel full of life almost the whole time.

    We were surprised by the excellent quality of breakfast which because of the amount we ate, became a brunch for us.  This day like yesterday started in church.  We visited Trinity Anglican Church in Kalk Bay after driving through a powerful rain.  Two surfers were working a little right directly in front of the sanctuary.  We watched them for a short time.  The real spot here seems to be Muizenberg.  That morning forty or fifty people were in the water there with wind rushing through the valley on the far side of Table Moutain (that reminded both of us of the windward side of Oahu just as downtown / harbor Cape Town reminds us of Honolulu), anyway the air gets compressed making the offshore winds powerful and consequently the waves looked beautiful held up by the wind and feathering.  With offshore windes, dark water and a brooding sky along with a very long beach to the left made the place feel like Second Beach in Rhode Island or like one of those American Luminist paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts.  There I spent more time describing it than we actually spent parked there.  On the way back we also stopped at a deserted parking lot in Muizenberg and I climbed up the dunes to quickly check the surf in a driving rain.  It was pretty blown out by that point but I would have loved to have a board.  We have no sense for surf culture here.  Booties seem unnecessary although we only saw riders in wetsuits

    But, back to the beach at Trinity Church.  Trinity has 600 members and it was the altar guild woman who had the suggestion of the day when she told us to visit the “Scratch Patch.”  There is another thing, besides the locked glass rooms that one needs to pass through in order to get into a bank.  There are “parking attendants” at even the most obscure places.  They carry billie clubs and look awkward about having to be there.  The children noticed them too, although for them it probably seems like just incredibly good fortune to find Africans everywhere ready to help us.

    In Simon’s Town the Scratch Patch also seems to be called Mineral World.  I don’t have much of as sense whether it is a legitimate business or not.  Very old and dusty gem polishing and cutting equipment is on display.  They have Peabody Museum-style cabinets and displays of gems collecting dust, a dark room for viewing “space rocks” with an eerie glow (at least at this point both children instinctively reached out to hold our hands), two different gift shops (one that resembled an exceptionally well-stocked geology lab and the other that was far closer to a jewelry shop).  Both seemed extravagantly manned with too many knowledgeable shopkeepers until a bus arrived with South Indians and demonstrated that most of our visit was exceptional because of how few people were there.

By far the greatest part of the whole experience was an odd little garden in front that had a zillion (estimated by careful counting and extrapolation) little gems everywhere that you would expect grass to be.  You pay for a little bag, go through the turnstyle and find yourself in Micah’s idea of heaven with little glittering polished rocks everywhere.  This alone would justify a trip from American but what happened next completely took our breath away.

    Another few miles up the narrow road (every .2 kilometers Heidi would scream, “Malcolm!  You’re too close to the side” and I would yell, “But the oncoming traffic seems so close,” and so on), we discovered something of great relevance to Micah’s other great love and interest – Penguins!  Just south of Simon’s Town at Boulder Beach hundreds of African Penguins vacation, billeted in nests in a dense growth of beach shrubbery.  They dig holes for nests and enjoy a kind of social hour collected on a white sandy beach where they also entertain throngs of migratory human beings from around the world who walk carefully along raised wooden boardwalks as they congregate down at the same bouldery white beach to provide a constant show for the penguins.  Now I have more pictures of penguins than I do of my whole family.  In a way the visitor becomes part of the family; all you have to do is travel 20,000 kilometers and pay a few Rand to park and you almost cannot help but become one of the gang.  These little creatures are so close at hand and so cuddly, you really root for them to make it as they wander waddling out into the shore break and try to make it back to their native element before getting crushed. Sometimes when a wave unexpectedly catches a few in the shallows they do what we do, duck dive under the wave paddle out a bit and let the back rush pull them back into shore.  Their backs are black (for the predators looking down on into the water), their tummies are white (for those predators looking up at them from the depths).  Some people believe this explanation but I think God chose their coloring to make them more attractive to humans who are the ones mostly responsible for their possible extinction.  In 1910 there were 1.5 million of them, today there are only one tenth that number.

    Speaking of God, I felt like a pretty shoddy pilgrim today during our Africaaner breakfast with super-salted herring, salmon, German bread, cheese tray, seasonal fruits (cherries, raspberries, blueberries, etc.).  I kept justifying it to myself while overeating and gem-searching.  I imagined that other pilgrims, the great ones probably didn’t go out of their way to have fun.  Maybe they did.  In any event I am a California pilgrim checking out the surf action across from the church.  Anyway what we did next inspired the kind of awe that all pilgrims seek.

    Every child hears and learns about it.  Parents and teachers intend them to have a proper respect for those brave discoverers whose names we still remember.  I never in my life expected to see it – The Cape of Good Hope.  The passing showers only fell when we were in the car – I think the weather discouraged other travelers but it certainly made the scene dramatic.  Vast expanses of chaparral that looked so familiar from a distance but strange close up, steep cliffs, dark waters, green shallows, distant lands and far off coves.  Eternity seems everywhere in these places like the moors in Northern England.  Rock, ocean, sturdy surviving plants, howling wind and an elemental feeling of the transcendent spirit, the creative force that brings all things into being and shapes our lives and blesses them by granting us our own creative work beside that Great Worker.  I couldn’t help but think of these explorers and travelers and their stories, all of which included the vantage point of seeing this place primarily from the sea.  I thought of the choices they made which brought them there and the forces beyond their control upon which their lives depended.  The winds blowing on the vast Southern Ocean with ice on one side and the bare steep hills with the clouds drifting by on the other.  I think I will rest more peacefully every night because I have been blessed to see all of this with the distant coast from the rocky stability of those cliffs.

    We went to the top of Cape Point around the light house and to the lonely hill over-looking the Cape of Good Hope as the children delighted us with their observations and sea birds that I have never seen or dreamed of glided by on strong winds.  We saw baboons and an ostrich out there on the cape.

    We had supper in perhaps the largest mall on the African continent.  We ate at Primi’s an Italian restaurant whose greatest asset is their lively African staff.  Cool, smart, welcoming, beautiful people.  Micah almost fell asleep at the table and for once showed more interest in sleeping than eating.  But who wouldn’t if they loved gems and penguins as he does and had the day that he had.  Now long after he fell asleep, I first heard the Muslim call to prayer and now strange music from an African concert somewhere between the rains…  Distant drums.