Day Twelve

Today we went to a farmer's market in the Tokai forest, which is a homeland for Baboons. I asked multiple vendors at the farm if they have ever had problems with baboons, and almost every single one of them has. The baboons sneak up on the vendors, steal food from their stand and run away. Before we had gotten there, there was a problem with them stealing cupcakes. Interesting, right? Well, these baboons are so unafraid of humans because of how close they live to them that they can run right up to them. That's not good for the baboon and not terribly great for the human, either. 

These are some of the baboon/human conflicts that South Africa is hotly debating. 

On the way home from the Tokai forest, we went to Groot Constantia, the oldest wine estate in South Africa, and we did a wine tasting: 

James, Erin, Amr and myself 

Day Eleven Continued

Today we went to Monkey Town after our visit to Lwandle. It seems to me that it is basically a zoo, where animals are held in captivity and are bred and used for the entertainment of people who pay to see them. This is unlike a sanctuary because though there are a couple of animals that they saved who were past pets, a sanctuary does not breed, it only saves animals from their current situations. Anyway, I have loads of adorable pictures of monkeys: 

Spider monkey, son of the alpha male of all the monkeys at monkey town, whose name is Luke.

 Squirrel Monkey

Baby Squirrel Monkey being hand reared by one of the workers at the zoo because he was rejected by his mother.

 Spider monkey again

 

 Antelope

 

 

Looking at pictures on the tour guide's cell phone and responding to them 

 Former pets who were saved

EMU!! 

 Breast feeding from the mother

Gibbon monkeys. In Asia, these are a big delicacy. They put them freshly dead in a hole in the middle of the table and eat their brains and don't touch anything else. To be able to get one Gibbon for this, they may kill all the other Gibbons around it. It's considered an aphrodisiac there, like many other strange, random and endangered things are.