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Nicole's
Travelogues and Budget Travel Tips..
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BOULDERS, SOUTH AFRICA
Boulders is a beautiful beach on the coast of False Bay near Simonstown. It's also home to the largest African Penguin colony on the continent. Penguins in Africa? Who knew? Anyway, there's not much public transportation down the coast from Cape Town. So your best bet in to gettting to Boulder's is renting a car or going on a tour. I don't like renting cars in other countries, so we booked a tour through Long Street Backpackers hostel. The tour was to Cape of Good Hope, Cape Point but we stopped at Boulders on the way.
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Table Mountain National Park web site Some beaches are inaccessible during high tide. Check the tide tables or call before planning to swim. Report injured animals to TMNP staff. When we went in July 2004, there were lots of adolescent penguins still with their baby feathers. Very cute! Boulders penguins mate in January and nest from February to August.
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Boulders is part of Table Mountain National Park. The entry fee is 15 Rand for 1 adult. There is a SMALL gift shop/museum onsite. After you pay your fee, you'll walk down to the boardwalks at Foxy Beach to view the penguins. When you leave, take a left down the path and you'll come to another entrance. This is actually Boulders Beach. Here you can swim and get close to the penguins on the beach and in the water. Don't get too close though as the penguins will lunge and their beaks are sharp! The largest concentrations of penguins are at Foxy Beach.
Oh and the penguins are actually nicknamed Jackass Penguins - we were told because the sounds they made were similar to a donkey. We were there for an hour watching and listening to the penguins and we heard alot of sounds. But it's REALLY a stretch to call them donkey sounds. African Penguins nicknamed Jackass Penguins in South Africa. Hummmm.....I guess we just caught them on a "I don't feel like making donkey sounds" kind of day!
The penguin colony started as just two breeding pairs in 1982. Now the colony has grown to about 3,000. The penguins diet consists mainly of squid and shoal fish. They can stay underwater for 2 minutes and can swim about 5 miles per hour. Penguins are a monogamous species (see it's not so unnatural!) and the lifelong partners take turns to incubate their eggs and to feed their young. 
