Miss Lily

I will take a lot of stories with me from this trip and a lot of them involves monkey business. They are funny creatures with such a similar ways to us humans that it makes me intrigued by them even if I am used to having them in my garden, office, kitchen and living room quite often. A place where I've never had them before however is in my car.. 

 

Everyone who has been to a place where they have baboons on the side of the road have probably seen nice signs with Beware of baboons, Don't feed the baboons, Keep an eye on your food.. Etc. etc. Well, now you know where this story is going..

 

Our group was on a day trip in a minivan with a pop up roof to Lake Nakuro National Park, where a lot of Out of Africa is filmed for anyone loving the Meryl Streep and Robert Redford movie?  All happy and cheery we were watching the zebras, buffalos and Thomson gazelles gracing on the few plains of grass that the rain had not flooded. The lake was bigger then in at least 10 years before which gave us less roads to drive on but hopes were still up for sightings of leopard and lions as we headed up to a picnic and viewing point called Baboon Cliffs. As we got up to the top some went to the bathrooms (or lavatories as Ricky would say;)) and some went to take photos of the view. Myself stayed a minute extra in the van while tying my shoes in the back. 

 

All of a sudden I hear something in the front seat and look up only to stare at a baboon the size of myself. I'm not exaggerating when I say that this male baboon was up to my shoulders when sitting down. He had eyed out our bowl of pasta salad wrapped in plastic and the next minutes was a battle between our guide and himself trying to win the lunch. They stayed in the front seat while I watched from the back but when he turned and looked for a way to escape with the bowl I found myself out faster than ever before while the baboon took my seat in the back. The whole troop of the baboons were now around the car, some of the smaller ones climbed in to get a treat of pasta, only to be thrown out through the roof by the big male. Baboons were flying, rocks where thrown, sticks were slammed into the car but nothing helped and we eventually lost our lunch. Luckily we did scare them enough to keep the rest of the bags in the van but Ricky had a bit of a fight with the male baboon over his bag after opening it and crunching the plastic inside. Seeing a man and a baboon pulling a bag and kicking each other is one of the funniest things you can see, let me just tell you that. 

 

After the adventure Stuart ran down the hill to retrieve our now very empty bowl and we hurried away from there and continued our game drive cursing every baboon that we saw the rest of the day. Lunch was spent on a lodge in the park which was almost as good as our pasta but even with the Askari (Masai guard) around the corner the baboons got away with stealing a cupcake from a little girl on the table next to us by jumping onto her back. She screamed for a good twenty minutes out of fear, poor thing. 

 

The game drive itself was average but we had good sightings of bird of prey such as Snake Eagles and of a lion laying on a rock overlooking the savannah. We went to a beautiful waterfall and got stuck in the creek when trying to cross which got us to prove the groups skills in pushing and pulling.  

 

A good day with beautiful nature and animals and yet again some adventures tucked in.