Baboon Smoking a cigarette

Baboon Smoking a cigarette
Originally uploaded by alexanderdavidgrossman.

Okay. He's not really smoking. But it looks like he is. These baboons were everywhere on our safari. They were like stray dogs. Wandering in packs. Stirring up trouble. Looking so damn human at whatever they were doing. Going through trash cans at the Zimbabwe border. Tugging on car door handles in the camp grounds. Chasing little kids. During high tea at the legendary Victoria Falls Hotel, where everyone sat prim and proper on the veranda, sipping tea and sampling the cakes and finger sandwiches from the sterling silver stands on their wicker tables covered in fine starched white linen, we spotted a baboon run right up to an old couples table, leap up onto the edge, grab a scone and take off... the old couple sat dumbfounded at what happened. They looked around for a waiter. And then another baboon did the very same thing. Never in all my years of high tea...By the way. A bit of news. Oprah is in town. ok. Technically not in town. She's over at Sun City, a huge resort in the north part of South Africa. She's celebrating new years with all these a bunch a hollywood types and Nelson Mandela as well as celebrating the opening of her Leadership Academy for Girls, a $14 million dollar project dedeciated to getting girls on the right path through education and stuff. It's all they talk about on the radio, which we have been listenign to during our car drive from Durban up here to St. Lucia and then up to Cape Vidal. By the way, everyone knows i am not posting these in any pareticular order yet, right? I spent the first two weeks here without an internet connection so now that we are in St. Lucia, where there is an internet connection faster that grandma's dial-up, I am just throwing up a bunch of my favorite photos. I'll probably get more organized and up to date once we are in Cape Town.