Year out

Goeie more!

thaismontanari — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 10:20:00 GMT

Another passage of the pinapple turck.. couldnt resist once again to their cheap price (just over 2 euros!). Otherwise.. well once again I regret not having started this blog earlier; now everything is basically settled in and, somewhere I don't feel like there's anything interesting to say. But, just read a friend's blog and even the most basic details I thought was interesting. So, I'm not forcing you to read on but for those interested.. I'll somehow start over.

WELL, my day starts at 8 so generally I wake up around 6:30/45 to give me time to take a shower and/or a decent breakfast [you find all kinds of food here, there's even a KFC in town!] generally cereal and any kind of fruit that's at hand [I'll definately miss the mangoes, pineapple, pears, papayas...]. I'll start walking to work at around ten to 8 - that is, if I'm not late. Once there I share the duty of cleaning a couple of the front cages with another volunteer [rehabilitation cages]. I'll often take my time as after this chore the only thing left is to sit on the bench [outside the gate we wait for visitors to arrive so that we can walk them in]. Then as I said before, I'll do tours and help out with random duties [also, around the beginning of my stay I tried learning Afrikaans; language widely used in South Africa and very similar to Flemish or Ductch. Not so hard for the basics as a lot of words are similar to English but, I'm afraid I won't get very far..].

For now, I am actually getting ready to leave The Crags; half glad, ha;f sad, already, a lot of volunteers have left and the place seems pretty empty. Not leaving Africa just yet though, I'm planning a trip to Namibia going by bus through northern South Africa. If everything goes well I'll be spending just under two weeks there.

Then, back to Europe [Paris] for about ten days before I leave for South America.

Anyone been to Namibia?

...

thaismontanari — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:42:00 GMT

Didn't realize how difficult blogging actually was.. nothing much happening at monkeyland I must say; although I've been going around the forest a lot lately taking photos for one of the volunteers leaving on sunday. I had a nice moment yesterday where I found some ringtailed lemurs in a clearing, off the path. Went to sit with them for a while and, well, desperatly felt like cuddling up with them in the sun =S.

A couple tourists only so far and its nearly 11. The pineapple truck has come and gone leaving the keyboard suspiciously sticky; sunny day in The Crags, going to go back outside and give someone else the chance to use the computer..

random rambling

thaismontanari — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 23:23:00 GMT

I was thinking of writing some more today but wasnt too sure what to write.. im, however, being forced by one of my housemates to write a lot more. Apparently I should state that I have a 'wild feral' kitten who so far has only managed to catch the odd insect and shadows. She did catch a lizard once though! And has tried going after our resident peacocks a fair number of times. Only to find out, like with our neighbouring elephants, that she was not as big as she thought.

I probably should get going now - I've been booked for half past.

South Africa, Plettenberg Bay

thaismontanari — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 03:46:00 GMT

How to start? Well, it's now been slightly over two months that I arrived in South Africa and although I had been planning on writing a blog just as soon as I'd started travelling, I never got around to it. Somewhere I do not have anything of interest to say but as most of my friends will know by now I am crap at keeping in contact..

So, here I am in Monkeyland's office it's 15:30 and I've been here since 8. Luckily now that season has passed - we'd get over 1500 people a day - there's not so much to do anymore. Since the beginning I've been cleaning some cages, walking people in, helping out in the curio store, making daily cups of coffees, helping out with the advertising (just had to tag over 1000 condoms with monkeyland stickers) and finally doing tours.

Anyway, I guess I haven't really told that many people what I'm up to.. so yea, I'm taking a gap year so doing a couple volunteering projects. This first one, for 4 months in South Africa and then another one, for another 4 months, in Ecuador. And hopefully between projects I'll be travelling around.

Not sure what to say else for now, too many things - or to little - have happened since I've arrived. I'll just try and keep this up to date from now on and leave me comments if there's anything more specific you'd like to know! Ah, and well in general I'd love to hear from you so, if you haven't yet added me on facebook do so and tell me about you..!

Gallery: Monkeyland

thaismontanari — Tue, 4 Nov 2008 12:00:00 GMT