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South Africa

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South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope (pictured) is one of the most famous capes in maritime history. Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias became the first European to sail around it in 1488, naming the cape “Good Hope” for the many opportunities this water route to Asia offered Europe. Cape Town, the legislative capital of South Africa, is located on the Cape Peninsula.
Cape Agulhas is the southernmost point on the African continent. Located in South Africa, the cape marks the International Hydrographic Organization’s recognized meeting point of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans Agulhas, which means “needle” in Portuguese, refers to the needle of a compass, which will point north without magnetic deviation at the southern tip of Africa.
South Africa's Table Mountain is a level plateau about 3 km (2 mi) from side to side.
The African penguin is also called the black-footed penguin, Cape penguin, or jackass penguin (due to its mating call resembling a braying donkey), and it is the only penguin species that lives on the African continent, mainly along the coast of South Africa and Namibia. Pictured are African penguins at the Boulders Penguin Colony in Table Mountain National Park.
A view of Cape Town, South Africa, from Table Mountain.
Robben Island, located in Table Bay, South Africa, served as South Africa's maximum-security prison from the mid-1960s to 1991. Its most notable prisoner was Nelson Mandela, who was jailed for 18 years before becoming president of South Africa. The last of the political prisoners were released in 1991, though the island continued serving as a medium-security prison for criminal offenders until 1996.
Nelson Mandela's cell where he was held captive for 18 years as a political prisoner in South Africa.
A Dutch Reformed Church in Franschhoek (Afrikaans for "French Corner"), a small town in Western Cape Province and one of the oldest towns in South Africa. French Huguenot refugees settled there beginning in 1688.
Thabana Ntlenyana -- or "beautiful little mountain" in the Sesotho language -- is the highest mountain in southern Africa at 3,482 m (11,424 ft) and the highest peak in Maloti-Drakensberg Park. The Park spans the border between Lesotho and South Africa and includes Sehlabathebe National Park (6,500 ha or 16,061 acres) in Lesotho and Khahlamba Drakensberg Park (242,813 ha or 600,000 acres) in South Africa.
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