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Location: Cape of Good Hope

We started our day early this morning at 6 am in order to fit everything into our action-packed day of sightseeing. Before we headed out on our South African adventures, Smudge surprised us with a heartfelt video of the voyage over the past 86 days that he had been working on since he joined the crew. We headed to our bus tour at 9 am and meet our tour guide, Andre, who was incredibly excited to show us around after not leading any tours in 10 months. We headed out and went to our first stop, which was quite a view from Camps Bay; this was the first of many stops but definitely didn’t disappoint. We then headed to Clifton beach and then continued up to Hout Bay, which gave us a beautiful view of cape town from up above. We drove along the cliff edge, which unsurprisingly gave us more amazing views of the water down below and the lush greenery that surrounds it. We drove around an hour an half to Cape point nature reserve; along the way, we passed through the city of Scarborough, which was filled with locals curious about our bus. Once getting to Cape point, we saw furry friends, including a family of baboons, and Andre seemed just as excited to see them as us. We hit the Cape of Good Hope which, for those of you who don’t know, is the most south-western point on the Africa continent, and for us, it is quite exciting because it was the first piece of land we saw on our passage from Richards bay. We then hiked 15 minutes up the Cape Point while others rode the funicular to the top, which revealed a breathing-taking view of the cape of South Africa. On the hike back, we stopped at the gift shop to indulge in some souvenirs and Christmas gifts for the family. We then headed back onto the bus and drove 30 min to Harbor View restaurant for lunch. It was a delicious lunch filled with fish and chips, calamari and milkshakes, and some other stuff for the vegans. We walked around Simons Town after lunch for a while and enjoyed the local markets. Our final stop on the tour was Cape Point National Park which meant it was time for penguins! We got dropped off at a beautiful beach and walked the path to the penguin beach. We got to get quite close to the penguins and got some good photos with them while the other tourists swam in the water behind. We enjoyed our last 30 minutes on the beach by playing hackysack and lying on the beach; we then headed back onto the bus and drove back. We said our goodbyes to Andre, who was a very informative tour guide and headed back home to Vela. We finished the night out with some delicious mac and cheese a=made by our captain and then squeezed. The question was, “If the person to the right of you were to get arrested, what would they be arrested for?” which you can imagine lead us to some very interesting conversations. As the program slowly comes to an end, we all really trying to enjoy every moment that we have left with each other.