Monkey Business

It is now the dead of winter in Cape Town, which means that it is that time of year when visitors from the northern hemisphere on their summer breaks start dropping by. The weather this time of year is typically cold and rainy, but the past week or so has been an exception to that rule and was absolutely gorgeous.

This was good news for my first tourist visitor, Topher Goodenough, a friend from Beverly. On his first afternoon in Cape Town he enjoyed a South African beer in the UCT pub and then Italian dinner in Sea Point with a whole bunch of my friends. On Saturday we joined my friend Kelly at the orphanage for refugee children that she volunteers at, and took a few of the kids living there to the park for an hour or so. The children are from various Southern African countries that are in conflict, and somehow made it to Cape Town with relatives or friends who can no longer support them. We had a great time pushing the kids on the swings and playing on the see-saw.

To combat any good that we might have done earlier in the day, we spent the late afternoon enjoying a gourmet sandwich and wine tasting at one of Cape Town's vineyards, Groot Constantia. To top it all off, we joined my friends for a game of laser tag and pizza dinner in honor of Emily A's 24th birthday. The evening was complete watching Jon David sip his Alabama Slammer at Rafiki's, a bar downtown.

Sunday was when the real adventure began.

Topher and I set out just before noon for our drive down to the very tip of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope. We went for a walk along the Indian Ocean in Muizenberg, watching some surfers (despite a shark warning in the area) and had a leisurely lunch in Simon's Town. Then, we rolled down our windows and set off to towards the Cape Nature Reserve. Only a short distance down the road, we saw cars pulling over, left and right. We, too, wanted to know what was going on. It was a family of baboons in the middle of the road!!! We quickly grabbed our cameras and hopped out of the car. Not 10 seconds later, the big daddy baboon, seeing our unattended car with windows down, ran at high speed towards my beautiful Honda Ballade and climbed straight through the window. I tried to run and stop him from getting in, but he was faster than me, and probably weighed more than me, too. He quickly made himself at home in the back seat. As he was helping himself to the granola bar he found in my purse, 3 of his baboon relatives joined him. An entire primate family in my car. Me, panicking that there were wild baboons in my car. 20 tourists laughing at me and Topher for being dumb enough to leave our windows down and taking rolls of film of Mr. Baboon rummaging through my belongings. Eventually the big guy found my wallet. It was like something out of a movie. He opened it up and started throwing 500 Rand ($70) around the car. Then he ate my last piece of gum.

The furry shape in the back seat is the dad. In the front passenger's side is the mom and little baby. Junior is up on top.



Note the other tourists in the background taking pictures of the monkey mayhem.

Lesson learned.

Finally, a park tour guide came to our rescue, and opened up one of the doors and shooed the big baboon out. His wife and children soon followed. We quickly rolled up the windows and surveyed the damage. Really, it was the best of all possible results. The big guy had eaten a granola bar and a piece of gum. His wife had peed in a cup holder (it really was a miracle that she had such good aim), and they hadn't managed to get into Topher's malaria pills that he needs for Mozambique. The contents of my bag and Topher's backpack was all over the back seat, and the car smelled mildly of baboon "musk". We drove to the nearest park rest stop (with the air conditioning blasting) and cleaned out the cup holder and reorganized our bags. We considered ourselves lucky that they didn't run off with our things, or make the car even more of a public restroom. Lesson learned: roll up your windows when you are in baboon territory.

We continued our drive to the cape point and went on an hour hike to the very tip of the continent. It was beautiful. Picture taking ensued.

We hit the road again rather quickly, to make the most of our remaining daylight hours. Despite our close encounter with the wildlife earlier, we were brave enough to pull over again and see the penguins that live on Boulder Beach on the Indian ocean side of the peninsula.

They were much more adorable and kind than their baboon friends and we were able to get up nice and close. We finished the tour with a drive along the Atlantic coast at sunset, getting back in to Cape Town just as it was getting dark.

Then, we hurried off for dinner and drinks with some friends at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront and watched as a gigantic thunder and lightening storm roll in.