The final days of babooning.

Well now it's done. We have left the beautiful seaside house at Kommetjie and I'm sitting in an internet cafe somewhere between Table Mountain, Devil's Peak, Signal Hill and Table Bay. This means I'm in Cape Town for those of you who gave up Geography in year 9. And yes of course I knew all of this before I came here...*gives a shifty look incompatible with S.African keyboards*...

There is much to tell but I think I should begin where I left off and describe the last few days of following Chacma Baboons round the Cape of Good Hope.

The weather luckily cleared up (for the most part) for the last week of the field season, which ended up being mainly myself and Tali (the masters/PhD student type person) collecting the final data for the Kanonkop troupe. Most of the other volunteer's had left, although South African Simon did stay until the night before 'Varsity' (ie Uni) started again.

As I think I've said before, the home range of the Kanonkop troupe is HUGE and they will happily travel across all of it in a day. So, if you've been sitting at home hiding from the rain the day before you basically have no idea where they'll be the next morning. So the usual start is - we drop Tali at one car-park to check the sleeping site there and then walk for about 50 minutes to the central sleeping site, while me and Simon drive all the way down the Peninsula to start at the other end and walk up to the other sleeping sites that we know of. I did once see a very convincing baboon shaped bush...but apart from that no luck.

We checked out another set of cliffs that they once slept on from the road with binocs but couldn't see any. Our next plan was to go north and head for 'Kanonkop' mountain itself where they tend to spend the summers, but we decided that we deserved a treat and started heading down South towards the visitor's centre where one can find tea and coke and chocolates (my interests clearly being in the latter)! We spot some baboons on the road - right near the visitor's center which is where the Buffel's bay troupe like to sleep. Hmm. Must be them. Tali stands on the car and peers into the bushes - it soon becomes clear that numbers of baboons we have are somewhat greater than Buffels' ten. Maybe the Cape Point Troupe then? The matter is settled when a hoard of juveniles appears on the road behind us - it's Kanonkop - hoorah! That was some serious luck there, it really was - Tali has spent whole days before looking for them!

We were quite excited too since they were pretty much in Buffel's territory - what would happen if they met? Kanonkop has about six recognisable grown males though only a few of those are proper adults with big shoulders. Buffel's has just one adult male - BB-King, and he's on the small side.

We followed the troupe through almost-impassable reedy swamps (i'm just glad there aren't too many snakes around here - I was ploughing my way through the reeds with no idea where I was putting my feet) and peered through the rain to spot them in the bushes; We went right past the back of the visitor's center, pole-vaulted over a small stream, trekked over sand dunes and finally lost them again in more bushes. The trouble with these guys is if you try to follow them through the bushes you can't get close enough to see where they go because they're too nervous - it only really works if you're literally on their tails and sometimes not even then. So I decided to stay on the road and espy them in the valley from the comfortably-tarmacked tick-free vantage point.

They tend to spread out a lot so I was catching glimpses of heads and tails here and there. Then I spotted a couple walking past a gap a little to the left and heading up hill - then another, and another and another. I thought I saw about ten heading that way - which I figured was better than the odds and ends Simon was trying to follow down in the valley in front of me so I called to him that I was going to keep up with this little group! They hit the road and graciously decided to walk up it so I followed them easily, trying to count how many were there ahead of me. They glanced at me but didn't seem too afraid which was good. I eventually settled on the original figure of ten - one adult male, several females with infants and a couple of juveniles. I'd left Simon quite away behind and was feeling very pleased with myself to have managed to hang onto such a big group of them all together when I spotted the tail of one of the mums. It had a kink in it just like that adult female 'Cher' from the Buffel's Bay troupe..........sh*t! I'd spent the last 15 minutes following the wrong baboons! Far from the fireworks we'd expected - the resident troupe has simply slunked carefully and quietly away and were heading home to the visitor's center completely ignoring the 'invaders'!

Later on Kanonkop also headed off to bed - towards the Buffel's sleeping site trees at the visitor's centre! The Buffel's troupe could be seen at a safe distance hiding behind a bush on the dunes, only coming forward and climbing the trees once Kanonkop had gotten out of the way on the other side of the building. The next morning they once again quietly disappeared in the opposite direction - the Kanonkop mass looked up as the left but didn't seem to have any inclination to follow. We followed Kanonkop again as they headed over the Dunes and onto a scrubby hill - we could see Buffel's picking on some tourists in the background but had given up hopes for exciting clashes.

I'll have to leave it there for now - it's ten to six which means sunset and I've gotta get back to the flat before dark. If I'm very clever I may write the next post on Lena's (the family friend I'm now staying with - yes, they're everywhere!) laptop and transport it here by some magical means tomorrow. Anyway - part two of the exciting baboon-following adventures in the next couple of days!

(Here's a teaser - we got our fireworks)