Today (still on holiday in Cape Town) started on a surreal note.

I left the front door of my brother’s house around 9:30, on business (bank, dentist), leaving short_mort in the house.

It was a bit damp outside from rain. As I looked across the street I saw something moving on the green grass under the trees. It was a baboon. An adult, by the size of him. He was strolling down the road behind the parked cars.
Baboons are dangerous, because they are clever enough to get into trouble but not clever enough to keep out of it. They have learned how to open garbage bins, doors etc. But don't know when to leave well enough alone

I stopped dead, then retreated, yelling for mort to get her camera. She came out in hurry and I had to reassure her that nobody had been injured, it was just another (unexpected) wildlife photo opportunity.

By this time the baboon was a little way down the road, and it may have been the yelling or the person holding a camera (like I said, they are clever enough to know that humans pointing sticks at them is bad news, but not clever enough to known which sticks are the boom-sticks) but he was speeding up. He ducked behind a car and vanished, I assume over a garden wall.

Another motorist had stopped (in surprise) at the side of the road near his last known location.

I stood there stunned, because I have never before seen a baboon in the suburbs of Cape Town before, and because the next person to encounter him may be in for a nasty surprise, and because we didn’t even get a single photo of it.

Just as I was string to think about who should be notified, an ADT security patrol car came past and we waved him down and told him. I don't think he believed us at first, then he pulled out a camera.

I wonder what happened?

My dentist opined that the baboon in question may be this guy on the move again.

Other than that, Cape Town is good. Internet is slow. Money is being spent, alcohol being drunk, people being seen. My teeth are fine. We have over 20 Gb of photos

Touring the Cape Peninsula. On Sunday the baboons, usually notorious at the Cape Point nature reserve parking lot, were nowhere to be seen. We drove around all of the side roads before finding a troop of around seven of them on the way out, rooting in the bush for roots, all to mort's delight. She'd never seen any kind of monkey/primate/ape outside of TV or zoos before. I assumed that the eternal baboons-human interaction problems were finally under control. You can't really call them wild animals, they're too self-possessed for that. But they certainly aren't tame. You can fool them once with any particular trick, and they know that people carry tasty food.


On monday, while stroking cheetahs, we heared an English tourist relate her experiences of the baboons at cape point on Saturday - baboons rampagaging through the outdoor area of the scenic restaurant, grabbing cheesecake from people's hands, sticking arms in through the windows to grasp food, etc. The next day they were no doubt lying low, fed and not wanting to predictably repeat the trick. So we were just unlucky to miss that. Or lucky, maybe.