…to be continued from last week’s Photo Friday.

As we rounded the curve on a very windy coastal road leading out to Cape Town, we saw this suspicious silhouette…

BABOON! A hitchhiking one at that, otherwise known as my father’s cousin. The funny thing is the peninsula is ridden with “Beware of Baboons” signage of all sorts, which we just dismissed as tourist lures. Surely there wasn’t actually the risk of baboons in such a heavily-trafficked area, I thought. But oh, no my friends; apparently, not only are they many, but they’re also extremely dangerous. If ever you’re just going about minding your own business and a baboon causes a roadblock in your path, whatever you do DON’T get out of the car. In fact, don’t so much as roll down your window or stop—like the hoards of stupid tourists, ourselves included, did when we saw our first baboon—as baboons are mean as snakes and will jump your car and shake it violently or try to climb in your windows (and eat all of your bananas, no doubt). And, little did we know at this early stage in our trip, but it was hardly the first interesting encounter we’d have with a baboon.

After Mr. Baboon held up traffic long enough, he finally strutted away with disinterest, and we continued up the road to Cape Point. Following a topsy-turvy path that hugged the coast (not my Xanax-influenced mom’s favorite) for most of the way, we reached a large flat expanse of land through which we continued our last 10 miles or so. (Note: There’s a nominal fee—around $10 a person, I recall—to get into the national park.)

Once we reached Cape Point, we had to park a half mile away and walk to the trailhead. We were pushing sunlight at this point, so instead of tackling the 45-minute hike as we’d normally be wont to do, we hopped aboard a shuttle and made it up in five minutes, then had a little bit of a stair climb from there.

This is what we saw once we reached the top:

Stunning. It reminded me, strangely, of Capri. For the far as the eye can see, it’s just ocean, ocean and more ocean. From the other side of the point, you have sweeping panoramics of the mountains that flank the eastern portion of the peninsula:

And then there’s of course the so-called meeting point of the two vast oceans. See the diagonal line jutting out from the rock below? That’s where the Indian and Atlantic collide—crazy that you can see a discernible divide.

(That is what we were told, at least. Upon doing my fact-checking, ever “reliable” source Wiki informs me there is no visible line…whatever, I’m going to go with this is it. It’s far more fun, don’t you think?)

After having traveled solo so much in the past decade, it was so very surreal being at the southern tip of Africa with my mom and sister in tow.

I’m thinking we need to make this a habit.

Next family vacay…Siberia?