Wildlife

Last week’s trip through the Eastern Cape may have yielded some excellent experiences and sightings, e.g.:

and:

…but urban Cape Town fought back this morning at breakfast with a mischievous baboon troop passing through the Groot Constantia estate, much to the delight of the tourists and the chagrin of the restaurant staff.

The local baboons aren’t really dangerous – indeed, they would rather have absolutely nothing to do with us humans – but they can be a pain: emptying rubbish bins and damaging the vines.

Watching the estate staff attempting to chase them away with compressed air guns, whoops and shouting was interesting. A real battle of wills, with the staff happy that they were moving the baboons away from the restaurant areas, while the baboons seemed pretty much unphased by the noise and the commotion, and were content to grudgingly head towards the mountain, but very much at their own pace.

More pics of more wildlife (and other autumn/winter photos) here.

Gatecrasher

Afternoon drinks at the Jonkershuis Restaurant at Groot Constantia in honour of Mrs 6k’s **th birthday were interrupted by this gatecrasher.

He came straight in through the front door, smashed a cake stand and stole two scones, which he proceeded to eat on the lawns in front of the building, displaying the typical male baboon “Yes. I’ve just nicked these two scones and now I’m eating them right in front of you and what are you proposing to do about it?” attitude and making me wish that I hadn’t forgotten to take my camera along.

Other than this untimely interruption, food, wine, service and company at Jonkershuis was nothing short of excellent.

Uncle Paul’s Christmas Party

We went, we got covered in hay, we survived. And the boy, who we expected to be asleep by 8 o’clock was still throwing himself from an alarming height into huge piles of hay gone 10pm. I can’t remember ever seeing him so excited and happy. It was wonderful to watch.

Getting any decent photos from quite difficult because of the low light, the (usually rapidly) moving subjects and the huge amount of dust in the air from the hay fights, which was picked out whenever I used the flash. Still – I did my best (including several (or more) point and shoot efforts for the folks back home) and the results are here.