Driving the Garden Route (Day 4 of 7)

If you missed days 1 to 3 and want to catch up before you start reading:
Click here for Day 1
Click here for Day 2
Click here for Day 3

The original plan was to hike around the Featherbed Nature Reserve, which we could see from the Knysna Heads on our walk yesterday. BUT we have since learned we need to go with a guided tour and it starts at 865 rand ($45 USD) per person, so respectfully… no.

Instead, we’re heading out to Plettenberg Bay to see the creatures at Monkeyland!

I always struggle a bit with whether I want to participate in animal tourism things. Mostly because I did some dumb stuff as a young backpacker and regret it. (The ethical concerns with riding elephants in Thailand wasn’t as widely discussed at the time.) But I love animals and still want to see them up close whenever it’s an option.

So now I like to double check and think critically – as we all should – about whether any activity that involves animals is actually ethical. BUT Monkeyland seems legit.

I think the government is aware of how important animal tourism is to its economy, and people love to see happy animals. Even if that’s not *why* they should find it in important, let’s not pretend it isn’t a factor.

ANYWAY.
Here we are at Monkeyland. Chesney came once as a kid and obviously loved it, and I saw a really wild video on Instagram years ago of a monkey swinging over a family’s head on a suspension bridge. I can’t keep my expectations that high, I know, but I’ll be happy just to see the lil guys.

They get to roam around the huge park as they please, have plenty of friends, and get fed several times a day. And most of them are rescues. Like this guy, the one with his legs daintily crossed. He was born in another zoo with poorer conditions where they had too many males, which led to fights so bad he even lost an eye. So they’ve adopted him and he’s able to live more comfortably with less competition. You can’t really tell in the other photo, but that’s his missing eye.

I also think these are the coolest monkeys I’ve ever seen. Like they’re so huge, so human-y. And they were just so keen to chill there on the path while the guide told us all about the them. My top fave primate of all time is a slow loris, and lemurs are a close second. I’ve never considered my primate-specific ranking chart before, but there you have it. Slow lorises (slow lori?) live in Southeast Asia so we won’t see any today, but we see tons of lemurs, including a newborn riding on its mom’s back.

I assumed we’d also get to roam free, but we actually have to go as part of a guided tour. It seems unnecessary until the children in our small group start throwing twigs at, or abruptly running towards, the monkeys and their parents do nothing. What is wrong with people? But the guide is a wealth of knowledge and great at spotting monkeys more hidden throughout the park that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

When we cross the suspension bridge at the end of the trail through the park, a spider monkey saunters up behind us. He’s like centimetres from me and says what I assume is monkey for “hello” as he passes. Once he gets past Chesney he continues swinging along down the centre of the bridge, racing us to the end. The Insta dream came true! Here’s my vid if you don’t believe me:

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After Monkeyland we have to head straight back to the Airbnb because we’re still working. I have a new client which has a different system than my last role where I could work whenever I felt like it as long as I hit targets. In this role, I’m editing travel articles for explore.com but we work in “shifts.” Eventually I’ll be able to set my own shift times but for now I need to work EST hours. So my 5pm is there 11am, and this allows me to make the most of the day and still keep earning money.

This lifestyle doesn’t pay for itself!

If you missed days 1-3 and want to catch up:
Click here for Day 1, here for Day 2, and here for Day 3.