South Africa, Cape Town, Baboons, nature conservation projects, animal rights

Wildlife Tours

Close encounters with baboons

Including transfers return City Bowl, guided baboon experience in Table Mountain National Park with accredited guide, coastal drive via Chapman's Peak drive*.

Filmed by Discovery Channel, “Walking with Baboons” is the South African equivalent of the Central African Gorilla projects, and a unique chance to get up close and personal with our genetic neighbours, the Chacma baboons.

This entertaining and educational tour begins with a spectacular coastal drive through Clifton, Camps Bay, Hout Bay and via the breathtaking Chapman’s Peak Drive*. The highlight and focus of the tour is our guided walk through the Cape Fynbos just outside the Cape of Good Hope nature Reserve… and right into the midst of a troop of wild baboons.

Here Jenni, head of this endangered primate monitoring and conservation project or one of her guides, will teach us how to interpret behavioural patterns such as grooming, feeding, and communication, and get to grips with the complex social structures and codes of this intelligent and sadly threatened species.

The future is very bleak for the remaining Chacma Baboons on the southern peninsula. Urbanization continues to reduce their natureal habitat, resulting in escalating conflict between man and baboon.  At the current mortality rate, experts predict that there will not be a viable baboon population on the peninsula within the next 10 years. Extinction will be quick to follow.

But there is hope: over the past five years, The Baboon Monitor Project has had considerable success in reducing inter-primate conflict by keeping baboons out of villages.

Bridging the gap between the wild world of the Baboons and the civilised world of their human cousins, the “Walking with Baboons” tour is an effort to foster appreciation for these incredible creatures, in the hope that better understanding will enable primates to learn to live alongside each other in harmony. Jenni and her colleagues are doing everything in their power to give the species a fighting chance at survival by raising awareness of their plight.

So pack those cameras, and prepare to take a walk on the wild side. This is a rare chance to get to know a very special branch of your extended family… before it’s too late.

* Chapman's Peak Drive is occasionally closed for maintenance or due to bad weather. In this case we will have to take another route via Oude Kaapse Weg, which is a stunning mountain pass.

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