South Africa: My First (and Only) Bungy Jump

After being harassed baboons but before being hunted by elephants, I did my first bungy jump from the Bloukrants Bridge on the Garden Route in South Africa.

With a height of 216 meters, it is one of the highest jumps in the world - and an excellent excuse not to do more jumps. "Naah, I will only be dissapointed jumping 192 meters".

The jump took approximately five seconds, but felt more like twenty. Falling through the air was definitely worth it!

Africa: Running from Elephants and Keeping the Blog Alive

Here is a video of some elephants from the trip in Africa 2014. 

Highlights: 

• 1:24 I'm chased by an angry elephant
• 1:40 The person in the tree next to the elephants.
• 2:13 The cutest elephant kid ever!

Most of the photos/videos are from the Kruger National Park in South Africa.

I've been focusing on genealogy lately, so the blogging has been suffering. I will resume the blog and keep it updated at least twice a month. The contents will be photos/videos, programming, trains and perhaps some genealogy.

Victoria Falls, ZW: More monkey business

We met some more monkeys that were much cuter than baboons, Vervet Monkeys, in St Lucia and later in Pilansberg, Victoria Falls and Great Zimbabwe.

The background music is from Youtube Audio Library.

As I have lots of things to do at work currently, I'll keep the blog in Idle Mode until the middle of June.

Boulders Beach, ZA: African Penguins (day 6)

Boulder's Beach is a part of Table Mountain National Park, south of Cape Town. That beach is a protected area for thousands of African Penguins. The population of penguins has risen dramatically since the 1980's, when there were only two spotted penguins in the area. It is listed in the IUCN Red List over endangered species.

The diet of African Penguins is normally sardines, anchovies. As you can see in the movie below, that species is monogamous.

If they are not eaten by sharks, seals, mongooses or cats(!), they can live for ten up to twenty-five years.

I think that the language spoken in the background is Afrikaans. If I'm wrong, you're welcome to comment.

Southern Africa: Monkey Business

Wild animals are hard to spot, as they generally leave the area as soon as they hear humans. This is not the case of wild animals that got used to humans.

At Cape Point, a baboon saw a tourist bus stopping and people leaving the bus. After one minute or two, that baboon approached the bus and tried to open the handles, as you can see in the picture. "Whatever humans can do, baboons can do it better."

The operation was successful and very funny. It was not quite as funny (or yes, later we laughed at it) when another baboon raided our bus with some people inside it. The people inside left the bus quickly and the baboon stole some food and left some "remainings" on the seats.

I've compiled a video of some baboons behaving as monkeys. My first Youtube video ever. I got the audio track from https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary, that is providing free music for Youtube videos

In a earlier trip in the Philippines, we saw some aggressive monkeys too (Puerto Princesa):