We started out the day on time for once. To Janine’s dismay we actually arrived 5 minutes earlier than expected. For breakfast she was half asleep and in her pajamas looking a little grumpy. She warned us ‘no-one talk to me until I’ve had my cup of coffee’ so I took that to heart and stayed out of her way until she got some breakfast. I went out onto the patio just to take a look at the scenery and I had to look twice because I didn’t believe it at first, there were three adult Savanna baboons (2 female and 1 male) each carrying offspring on their back. So I rushed to the patio door and told the rest of the group to come out and see them. We watched them run up behind the little trail behind the cabin.
After breakfast we went to the cabins to pick up some things students needed for the day. When we got there we saw baboons rooting through the trash looking for food and Dan had to walk us to our cabins to collect our stuff.
Following this, we went to the conference centre to listen to a lecture by Kyle Smith, a marine ecologist at the Garden Route National Park region, who spoke to us about the research they were doing on adaptive strategic management of the marine resources in the Garden Route National Park’s marine protected area. He talked about the depletion of fish through fishing and how protecting these areas has increased the numbers fish and fish species. He said ‘at the moment we transform the world but we don’t monitor it’ which I think he meant we are changing the world without realising the consequences of our actions. I found this talk very interesting because it opened up the idea that conservation of one species can be to the detriment of species. As we helped carry out his monitoring equipment, Dan spotted some bottlenose dolphins and showed them to Maddie and I. We got the rest of the group to show them the dolphins, everyone was very excited seeing them.
After a delicious lunch of chilli burritos we packed up for a hike to a waterfall on the Otter Trail. As we walked to the beginning of the trail, we saw a number of different species of birds that we hadn’t seen before. We saw another Knysna turaco which is a pretty green bird as well as a millipede which is called a Shongololo here. The hike was a long walk along the rocks on the coastline and was difficult in places but it was worth it when we finally got to the waterfall. There was a pool at the bottom of the waterfall and the whole group decided to take a swim. We put one foot in the water and it was freezing! But we went in anyway because we wanted to say we had done it.
Maddie and her find!
When we got back from the hike and we went to dinner at the restaurant where we celebrated Lenka’s birthday with a lovely meal and a cake. We ended the day with a fireside discussion reviewing the first 2 days of the trip. This is the post from Jessica Gill until the next time.
Swimming in the waterfall pool on the Otter Trail!!
What an interesting day! Love that you are learning about the ocean life, and the fish management they are trying to accomplish there. Reminds me of the moratorium that was implemented on the cod fish here at home, hoping to restore the stocks and it too seems to be working.