Week number two!

I am now in the very small local post office which I managed to walk to from the house - which means as much time as I want - wohoo! There is a rather cute dog in here too which is distracting me some what.

A whole 'nother week without a post - I'm sorry - there has been much baboon following you see. And it'll be a while more again, weather dependant. Luckily we don't go out when it's raining or gale force winds like yesterday as we would get washed/blown off the mountains. Today babooning has been called off due to an inability to find the baboons!

Have been out with three different troupes this week: Kanonkop, Buffel's Bay and Cape Point. They all have slightly different home ranges within the Cape of Good Hope reserve.

The Kanonkop troupe is huge - with about 40 adults, and they also have a huge range which means finding them is a real pain if you didn't follow them the day before to find out where they were sleeping. The first day they went out they never found them all day but last Sat I went out with Tali (the PhD student/organiser) and managed to spot them in the early morning sunning themselves on a tower of rocks which we now know is one of their sleeping sites. Following them is tricky because they're not accustomed to humans, plus they spread way out rather than sticking together so you never know which ones to follow and where the rest are! Fortunately most of their range is quite flat with low vegetation. It looks a bit like a rock garden sometimes - all low shrubs! We saw a puff adder that day - it was big and orange and entirely the wrong shape for a snake, moving more like a caterpillar.

I've worked Cape Point quite a lot this week. These are the guys which have the moniters chasing them and like to jump into cars. Just the other day they led us straight up the most appalling thick-bush-covered mountain. Ouch ouch ouch.
A couple of days before that while partner Simon had gone off to fetch the car, the moniters chased them into tall bushes that I had already been warned were impenetrable. Ok, I thought, I'll stick really close and follow their paths. This sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. :S However, I inevitably lost all sight of any of them though I could still hear the moniters whistling behind me so I decided to forge ahead and get to the road on the other side at the same time as the baboons. Oh so not a good plan. Tho I did manage to get through it! Just.
So I finally make it to the road absolutely exhausted and scratched to bits where I realise the walkie-talkie is no longer in my pocket. Sh*t. I could go back in, but there is no sign of Simon and I have no phone. So I wait, and I wait. Helpfully the baboons turn up. Great - one less lost thing! While sitting around waiting for Simon I realise that one of the females is carrying something that looks vaguely like meat or leather. It turns out to be a dead baby that appears to have been born prematurely. Not good. I grab my camera, leave my bag and stick and go over for a better look. I really should have known better. Brutus, the dominant male, goes straight for my bag and proceeds to take everything out and gnaw at my (luckily empty) sandwhich box. So I just stand there while all the tourists who've stopped along the road watch. Man do I look stupid! Brutus eventually got bored and left, I eventually located Simon, and we came back the next day and managed to find the walkie-talkie pretty easily. So that was ok!

The Buffel's bay troupe are smaller with a very small territory. These are the real menaces as they have no moniters and a visitors centre and picnic site in the bay - these are the guys that raided the picnic and went for me and Lily last week. A few days ago BB King, the dominant male, and Elvis, a sub-adult male, went for some kids at the visitors centre. By which I mean they threw two small boys to the ground. Not good. It may be that one of the kids had a sweet or something - the parents came in and stood between them and the males backed off. So not good. I think the park want to rubber-bullet them to try and scare them a bit - they're far too tame.
Not just tame - they're mean. Simon and I went without researcher jackets with Al once. Britney, a pregnant female, was getting left behind. She finally passes us whereupon she stops, looks carefully at Simon and I and starts screaming. Not in pain or panic, but calling the others. We didn't even have backpacks on at this point, but the all came running up and surrounding us. We pointed our sticks at them till they went away. They did it to me again a bit later, just coming up looking far too interested - it's possible that they thought the camera I was holding was food. Anyway they're clearly used to preying on tourists!
We went to watch some University of Cape Town (UCT) people darting them with darts that fall out containing a small flesh sample. The first time it was Britney that got hit, she ran off screaming and BB King was straight in there at the guy with the blow pipe thing. After that he got a bit more nervous though and gave up charging. The guy decided darting him without the safety of a car was maybe not such a good idea though. I kept WELL out of the way while all this was going on!

Ok, I think this is probably enough of a mega-long uber post to keep you going for a while! I think I shall go back to the house and watch some more Prison Break DVDs. :D