Where we live, who we met, and what we do

Now that we are all caught up on our Cape Town adventures, I thought it would be best to get you acquainted with our every day particulars in the Overberg! The closest city to us is called Hermanus. It is a little city (town?) that receives a lot of nature tourism and vacationers from Western Cape province. There is a small, flat coastal area right by the ocean and the rest is very mountainous.

We are renting a little cabin here called Kite Cottage. It is small but perfect for us. We don't need a lot of space because we don't spend much time there, anyway.

Kite Cottage

The ocean and rocky coast nearby our cottage.

We are being sponsored by a little NGO called Whale Coast Conservation. They focus primarily on environmental education in Hermanus and in the surrounding towns, villages, and schools. They've been busy   lately organizing a travelling "energy expos" show where they go into different primary schools or community centers and show kinds about different kinds of energy (potential, kinetic, etc) and also different types of renewable energy models made of recycled materials and toys. They've been a massive help to us by setting us up with a little work space in their office and helping us to navigate and contact all the people here that we need to get in touch with and talk to about setting up research here.

We had a big meeting on the 31st to present our research goals to some interested parties including Cape Nature reps, local conservancy reps, a guy representing some wine farmers, a guy representing the Hermanus community, and even a local radio station manager! The meeting went well and we were given support and permissions to get started to look around at the different areas where the baboons are living. On the 6th, we were invited to do a short radio segment for Whale Coast FM to talk about our research! It was our first time on the radio...very cool. The guy in charge of the program invited us back to do an hour long interview in the next couple of weeks!

The baboon PR campaign

The rest of our time has been spent driving around the Overberg region to meet with people and see where the baboons are hanging out. Once we pick some specific places to do research, we can start focusing more intensely on data collection! But more on that next time....