Penguins Day 6 - Saturday 11th May

Today we discovered that while it’s easy to get off the island, it’s not that easy to get back on!

It was our day off, so we took the morning ferry back to Cape Town. Nancy and David disappeared to find the train for their overnight trip to Simonstown.  Kelley and I got the tourist bus round to Kirstenbosch botanical gardens, where we had a wander round and then some lunch. The gardens are really beautiful.

The tourist bus took the long route back to the waterfront, but the drive round the peninsula coast was quite spectacular. We arrived back in Cape Town around 4pm, and had a really quick whizz around the shopping mall to buy essential supplies consisting of an internet dongle, wine, chocolate and shampoo.

We got to the ferry terminal in plenty of time for the 5pm staff ferry back to the island … but they only had Kelley’s name and not mine. You have to book tickets two days in advance and get the form signed in triplicate to be able to travel. It was literally a case of ‘your name’s not on the list, you can’t come in.’  After about half an hour we were getting very frustrated. I was at my wits end, because all my stuff was on the island, and I was preparing for a sleep in at the ferry terminal as I had nowhere else to go. Luckily, one of the island tour guys recognised Kelley and managed to convince the officials to let us both through.

Even better, when we arrived on the island Katta was waiting for us at the ferry terminal and gave us a lift back to the house, saving us a long walk with all the shopping. We had a quieter dinner with just five of us present, then I attempted to get the internet dongle to work … if you are reading this, I was probably successful.

Sad news of the day – Richard reported another penguin run over, which makes three this week L