Backpacker's Gold = Toilet Paper

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So six weeks into our stay in the tucked away Crags suburb located outside of Plett. Monkeyland has been interesting, if not strange in many ways... There are good and bad things to every situation and this is no exception. Each day we wake up to sounds of over a thousand birds calling in the giant bird sanctuary outside of our volunteer house. As we begin to eat breakfast, have coffee and put on our khaki ranger uniforms... we listen to the call of Atlas, the lar gibbon marking his territory by song. He is doing the same thing the gibbons all over Southeast Asia do. Their whooping call can be heard up to 4 kilometers away and it is quite relaxing in a way. Once we are somewhat awake finally, ready to head out the door- we grab our blue backpack stuffed with our lunch (the same PBJ sandwiches everyday) and head towards Monkeyland. If we are lucky, we will see our meerkat friends playing around in the yard. They stand atop a small log looking out for imaginary predators and then run around in circles before ducking away into the bushes. As we walk further up the road we see a troop of baboons, the young ones playing with one another and the adults seeing how close they can get to the food storage rooms of Monkeyland...some times they are lucky and steal a few mouthfuls of fruit. The baboons get incredibly close, but not as close as the ones roaming around Victoria Falls in Zambia. I have never felt threatened really by the baboons and they seem to ignore us for the most part.

Monkeyland is full of many faces and characters- I think most of them have been affected by being there for such a long period of time. It does begin to play with your head a bit when you are constantly surrounded by mischevious little squirrel monkeys up to no good.

We have Neil, the professor, self proclaimed Guru-buster who will rescue anyone's child from a Guru cult if they supply him with $25,000... lives in a self built house (that is incredibly nice!) powered by solar and wind technology that he built himself... slightly paranoid... ok quite paranoid guy and always a nervous mess but he is doing quite well with his knowledge of investing and markets... Monkeyland is basically his answer to becoming a bit bored. At one point he was a game ranger in Kruger National Park and now has settled for Monkeyland while his real income is created elsewhere... He is constantly talking about his backpackers guidebook that he has been compiling and hopes to market online... he has travelled to a great many places and knows what he is talking about- although sometimes it can be a little over the top. He says that toilet paper is a backpackers gold- especially when travelling throughout India. He has photos of Abilene, Texas- which he visited while hiking across the US over a decade ago.

Bert, a wise man with as many scars as stories, a proud Namibian that remembers when... fought in the border war with Angola and has many stories of lost lives and friends and making alcohol out of anything they could to ignore the insanity that was going on around them at the time... once made his living rounding up discarded cattle in South African's Namaqualand and Great Karoo and then cowboy-style driving them up to their farm in Namibia, where they would fed higher grade grasses and meal mix only to become some of the healthiest cows in that area... he now lives on a small farm area near Monkeyland with his cat, 60 some odd chickens and a few guns. He speaks with the animals and seems to know almost anything there is to know about the indigenous wildlife and plantlife of Southern Africa.

Sirgen, a very short but loud and proud coloured (mixed race) guy from the local township of Kurland Village. He may be small but he takes no kak from anyone, including the occasional racist from some small dorp with a population of 20 who cannot believe that maybe this small coloured boy actually knows more than he does about something... and he does. . .

to be continued... with more photos as well.

take care..

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