On Adrian’s suggestion, we took off for the south coast. The trial run of the Beagle led us to where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet at Cape Agulhus along a coastline lined with shipwrecks from as far back as the early 1700s and as current as 1960. It’s not quite the coast of “Skeletons on the Zahara” (an excellent non-fiction account of the survivors of a Dutch ship in the 1800s) but it has its share of drama. On this day, the sea is opal green and only tourists are about. Well, tourists and vicious biting ants. Stopping to photograph the scene is to be swarmed and bitten by these tiny monsters. The tiny will rule the earth.

Penguins rule at Betty’s Bay. The colony of African Penguins is one of two on the southern coast, the other being at Boulder Beach.

These elegant birds are so endangered that any colony is fiercely protected and one must be careful not to disturb them. South Africa does a nice job of combining tourism and protection in this area; one can walk among the birds on boardwalks and the interpretative signs are current, if not a bit depressing.

Moving inland we traveled through the De Hoop Reserve with its enormous white sand dunes and on into the Karoo, a scenic land reminiscent of the desert Southwest in America.  The resemblance is only superficial. The American desert is a baby compared to the age of this African land.

About the time the very smallest creatures were forming, the land around us – the coastline and the inland Karoo region – was being contorted and punished by the breakup of Pangea, the super-continent of early earth. This place, the Karoo, is really really ancient. Fossils here date from the Permian Era, 100 million years before the dinosaurs came into being – 100 million years! The creatures fossilized here are bizarre as any to ever form. Looking at them, encased in stone and viewed at the excellent Fossil Walk in the Karoo National Park, I consider how long it took for these creatures to get the way they were – like big flat turtles with no shell sliding around in the muddy primordial ooze on short stubby limbs. And on and on life goes; these creatures petered out and reptiles formed. What a trip thinking about the time frame as we drove through the hot and dry Karoo.

We tackled Swartsberg Summit, a high rocky pass, to see how the Beagle would handle the 4×4 terrain.

I drove up, and I give it a pucker factor of 30 on a range of 1-10. Going down pinged the pucker factor even more – people do this for fun, you know! It was a blast; the Beagle is a rock-crushing machine (and a thirsty one) and she could eat that pass for breakfast. Turning her around is a project – for the many times we need to make u-turns. There are four or five navigation devices on board and we still wind up turning around for missed turns or wrong ways. Narrow streets in the townships are the most difficult to negotiate but people are nice, pointing out the way through.