Salt Heart: Baboon Avoidance

Sheesh! Where do we live that I have to title my blog something like "Baboon Avoidance?"

I almost hate to report on another nice weather weekend here in Cape Town. It's definitely not like any winter I've experienced before. On Saturday Eliot and I spent a good part of the day in the water body boarding. We've both gotten ourselves kitted out with wetsuits and boards, so it was nice to go for a splash. Eliot goes out pretty far to catch the bigger waves, but I was having a hard time and feeling like I was going to drown trying to get past the wave break. I kept getting pounded wave after wave so eventually I decided to go a bit shallower (where my feet could at least touch) and catch those waves. There were tons of people out enjoying the water and the sunshine. It's kind of funny going to a beach and seeing everyone wearing wetsuits instead of swimsuits. Didn't get any photos of our beach adventures. Cape Town kind of has a reputation of petty theft, so my camera would have surely been taken if I'd left it on the beach.

On Sunday we really wanted to go and hike Table Mountain, the icon of Cape Town. But when we got up in the morning we couldn't see the top of the mountain because it was covered in clouds. We've both been warned about how the weather up there can change quite drastically and may have nothing to do with what's going on down at sea level. So people always say that if you can't see the top of the mountain, it's best not to hike it.

Instead we went down to Cape Point National Park and did a great hike around there. We parked the car and hiked down a mountain that led us to the beach. It was so beautiful and we didn't see another person the whole 2 hour hike. But we did run into a family of baboons. The trail went along the beach, and then curved up and went back up the mountain. But there was a part of the trail that the trees and brush had grown over creating a sort of canopy, but a very LOW canopy that you have to duck under. The family of baboons were hanging (literally) around this area of the trail and up in the trees. We aren't really scared of the baboons, but we've heard horror stories from people about how they can be very vicious if they think you have food. We didn't want to disturb them, or give them any reason to feel territorial, so we decided to hike over the large rocks down by the beach. We eventually found our way back to the trail and continued on our hike up the mountain.

A great weekend and to top it off, Monday was a holiday so we had an extra day to just chill. I wish every weekend was a 3 day weekend.