Sea stars, anemones, and penguins

We were all very excited for the arrival of the day when we could finally make it out to Simon's Town. The kids were overjoyed at the prospect of seeing penguins and the adults were beyond overjoyed to see the kids so happy and excited. The day began at 10:00am. It was gloomy and chilly, but nonetheless, everyone was excited to head out. With bacon and egg rolls in their stomachs and muesli bars, sports drinks, and oranges in their knapsacks, the kids couldn't wait to jump in the car.
After a twenty minute ride of laughter, wide curious eyes, and pointing at just about everything, we arrived at Boulders Beach. Our explorations began with a small beach where we found sea stars and anemones. It was a lot of fun to see the kids get excited when they saw an anemones tentacle move or felt the sea star slowly close it's tentacles on their hand. I was overjoyed to see how gentle and careful the kids were with the animals. Sea stars were observed swiftly but gently, and placed back in the same area where they were found and with much care. It was heartwarming to see that everyone understood that animals must be treated with respect and love. (these are Rudy's words :) ).
We then made our way down the beach and collected any rubbish that was seen laying around. Together, as a team, we threw the rubbish into trash bins with smiles on our faces.
Following the path, we headed towards the main attraction: penguins! It seems that we may have come during breeding season because many adult penguins were missing and substituted by extremely fluffy and cute baby ones. They are very curious creatures and not at all shy of people and were very close to the fence. We were all warned that if we like our fingers, not to touch the penguins because they will bite them right off! Hard to imagine such cute animals viciously biting off fingers, but none of us were going to test the theory. We enjoy our fingers...they come in handy quite often. The kids were able to identify nests very quickly and would look into every hole and look for penguins. Most of the time they found exactly what they were looking for. I myself was overwhelmed by the cuteness of the fluffy baby penguins and fought hard not to pet one. Rationality screamed "No Jenn, No!!!" every time I would get the urge. Luckily, the path soon ended and we found ourselves on a lovely little beach. By this time the gloomy weather had turned into sunshine and it was a beautiful warm day. So what don you do on a warm sunny day? Go for a swim in freezing water of course! The four brave souls, Rudi, Jaylee, Dan, and Bronwyn decided to climb some rocks and take a dip. As tempted as I was, someone had to take the great photos :)