Travel Diary – a typical afternoon with the South African monkeys

Diana Kerr, a recent volunteer at our monkey sanctuary in South Africa, has a written a fantastic travel blog about her experience. This is the second installment of her blog. For more information about mornings at the sanctuary, read her last blog.

…After lunch, if we had all finished early, we got to take the baboons for a walk down to the pool. I say pool, but the locals had stolen the pump and so it was empty. However the baboons enjoyed a bit of freedom, running around the wooden area  while we sat on the ground and were clambered on! Like typical toddlers they were too tired to walk back and so were carried!

More baby feeding followed at 5 ish then the babies who slept in baskets  had nappies put on ( holes cut for the tails!) and they were put to bed. Once a blanket had covered the baskets they went to sleep until morning. However they could not be left alone so the volunteers took turns to have them in their rooms and if they woke they had to be fed again!

There were some social highlights, the visit to the Junction, a local restaurant about 10 minutes away where we saw two Hippos wallowing in a pool, the Saturday night barbcue or Braai (  South African style)  and the traditional Potjie where we cooked pots of food on the fire and which was delicious. I met some smashing people and my only regret was that I couldn’t stay longer, I was only there for 8 days. It really was the experience of a lifetime.

If you want to volunteer with monkeys in South Africa, we still have availability in 2016 and we would love to get you involved. The welfare of these animals relies on the effort and passion of the volunteers at the sanctuary.