Barbed Wire & Baboons

This first photo visually sums up South Africa: beautiful scenery and high crime rates.

Check out the pretty lamp in the next picture: it’s surrounded by cctv cameras. Nearly every home has cctv monitoring as well as electric fencing, concertina wire, and signs proclaiming that an “armed response team” will come if the alarm goes off.

According to our guide, the number of homeless has grown exponentially since the Covid pandemic.

I’m not sure what the deal is with the hookah place. Is pot legal here? I dunno. It did crack me up to see all the UberEats motorbikes parked beside it, as if ready to deliver when folks get the munchies.

As our tour bus left Cape Town, the countryside was beautiful. But look closely, every time you see a cluster of homes, there is an electrified fence around it, with cctv monitored perimeters.

At the outskirts of Simon’s Cove, we saw a street sign warning of baboons. Our guide explained that residents cannot leave their windows open.

“If they do, the baboons will enter and trash the place.”

As if to illustrate her point, we saw a few baboons shortly after she told us this. One sat on a wall eating from a bag of cookies. Another drank from a puddle, while a couple more hopped from rooftop to rooftop, trying to find a way inside.Read more