Beware of Baboons

This past weekend we “hired” a car and set out on a self-guided tour of Cape Peninsula. Most tourists get packed into a bus like sardines and taken on a day-long guided tour of the Peninsula, but we thought we could show ourselves a better time, even if that meant making up information about some of the places we saw. I drove, Laura sat shotgun to navigate and warn me if I was going to hit any obstacles (the obstacles being bike riders, trees or other cars) and Amy sat in the back, in charge of taking pictures and divvying the snacks. I wouldn’t say that I completely got the hang of driving on the left side of the road, but other than a few unlucky bushes, there were no major catastrophes.

First we drove south on Chapman’s Peak Drive, a 9 km route winding along the Atlantic Ocean that has been named one of the most scenic marine drives in the world. Then we continued south through the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve, ending at Cape Point to explore. It is popularly believed that this is where the Indian and the Atlantic Ocean meet, but we learned that this isn’t true, and that the currents actually collide further southeast. We took in the views as the sun began to set and we headed up to Boulder’s Beach, our lodging destination for the next 2 nights.

Boulder’s Beach is located on the eastern side of the Peninsula and is made up of inlets between granite boulders. A colony of African penguins calls this place home, and we could see hundreds of them from our room at the lodge. You know that you’re in South Africa when you’re asked to check under your car before you drive to make sure there are no penguins hiding. We were warned that they may wake us up during the night, but we didn’t take this threat too seriously, naively believing that a penguin so small couldn’t possibly make a noise capable of keeping us awake. We were wrong. At about 5am we were awoken by what sounded like multiple donkeys dying outside our window, and none of us could believe it was actually penguins making this noise. There are about 3,000 penguins that inhabit this area – and I would venture to say we heard every single one of them.

Saturday we continued our tour as we drove through Simon’s Town, Fish Hoek, Kalk Bay, St. James and Muizenburg. These were all beautiful, sleepy little towns with not much happening during the winter months. We got to watch some surfing and do a little shopping, but it didn’t take long before we’d seen everything these towns had to offer. We decided to spend the rest of the afternoon at a pub watching the Cape Town Stormers who were playing in the rugby semi-finals. They lost, but we had fun making friends and continuing to try to learn the rules of rugby.

Sunday morning we woke up early to do some hiking in the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve. The entire weekend we had seen signs warning us of the danger of baboons, but we went the whole weekend without seeing any. Finally as we drove on Sunday, we saw a troop of them on the side of the road and naturally pulled over to give ourselves a closer look. The more we saw, the bigger they seemed to get, until finally the biggest one appeared out of the woods and started walking toward our car. We rolled up the windows and kept the doors shut, so none of us were nervous as we believed we were safe inside the car. Again, we were wrong. This thing propped itself up on my door so that it was eye level with me. Before I even had time to get scared, it proceeded to open my door! Absolutely shocked, I screamed and was able to pull it shut and lock the door before it got inside. After the baboon realized it couldn’t get in the car it lost interest and all of us were left both laughing hysterically and screaming our heads off. I think this was my favorite part of the entire weekend. These things are hideous, and appear as if they are the product of a monkey who mated with something it shouldn't have.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in the nature reserve taking in the most astounding views I’ve seen in my entire life. The pictures below will do a much better job of depicting the beauty of these places as my words could not do them justice. Again, none of us could believe how blessed we are to be able to hike around the southwestern most tip of Africa on a Sunday afternoon.

We were all happy to get away for the weekend and very much enjoyed the freedom of having a car. There is something that feels unusually right about driving along the coast of South Africa with the windows rolled down while listening to country music. We believe we gave ourselves an excellent tour of the Peninsula and are thinking about starting our own tour company soon.

Tomorrow we will take another crack at Table Mountain - but we're going to win this time.

The start of our road trip - driving took a lot of concentration

View from Chapman's Peak Drive

Laura and I on Chapman's Peak Drive

Cape Point

Amy posing with one of the many Beware of Baboons signs

View from Cape Point

Me at the Cape Point lighthouse

Amy and Laura checking out one of the penguins at our lodge. They look cuter than they sound.

Laura and I toasting at dinner on the first night. We were later told by other restaurant goers that they could tell we weren't locals because we were drinking beer with our dinner, something that is very rare here. We were glad we could stand out.

Laura and Amy at Bertha's in Simon's Town

Laura and I on the beach in Fish Hoek

We really wanted a picture with Stormer's jerseys on after the rugby game, so we did what any normal person would do - asked 3 individuals in the pub to take theirs off so we could take a photo. They obliged.

Cape of Good Hope

Views from the car at the Cape of Good Hope. There's a rainbow if you look closely.

The 3 of us at the southwestern most point of Africa

Cape of Good Hope

 The 3 of us hiking around the nature reserve

This is the guy who tried to get into our car. One minute we're driving down the road listening to Kenny Chesney's "Somewhere With You," and the next minute a baboon is trying to drive our car.

More baboons causing trouble. These pictures don't do justice to how sick these things are.

 

Cape Point