On Day Three in Africa, Chris and I partnered up with a young Malaysian couple from our hostel, rented a car ($36/day, so $9 each), and drove down to the Cape of Good Hope. Along the way, we saw a gaggle of gawkers lining the road, cameras poised at the ready. Stopping our own car, we got out to see what was the cause of all the commotion.
It was obvious.
A Southern Right Whale sat about fifty yards offshore, surfacing and submerging and generally putting on a show for the onlookers. It was the size of a house. Once, it even raised its head out of the water, showing off its baleen. At that point, it looked scarier than a shark.
Later on in the day, after hiking to the meeting point of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, we stopped for a troop of baboons walking the other direction on the road. We got out our cameras to take a few pictures. After a handful, the baboons grew tired of being made sport of. Three of them charged straight at the car, leaped up onto the hood, and climbed up the windshield.
“Drive! Drive!” Natalie, the Malaysian girl, said to her boyfriend Alex.
He took off, and we saw the baboons jump off the back of the car and rejoin their troop. If this is day three, I can only imagine where things will go from here.
Just A Regular Vaganza 