Monkeys!

early morning and down to breakfast.  The owner of the guesthouse was up and boy was he a chatty chatty man.

We hoped to take the featherbed trip in the morning so headed into Knysna to book onto it but unfortunately there was no availability that day so we booked tickets for the next day and then went to grab some coffee (and perhaps a cheeky wimpy!) while deciding what to do for the rest of the day.  The decision was to head down to Plettenberg bay and to Monkeyland which is a primate sanctuary providing a home to monkeys that had been bought as pets, and then given up, or from zoos that had shut down.  They have about 12 hectares of forest space for the monkeys, lemurs etc to roam around quite happily.  A guide takes you around pointing out some of the monkeys when they come out and we saw a LOT of monkeys.

At one point I was taking some pictures of a capuchin monkey and then found I was surrounded.  I stopped taking pictures when one of them started grabbing at my ankle and another was tugging at my elbow sleeve so I carefully made my retreat!  

It was a fascinating walk around the forest and a great experience to see the work that the sanctuary did.

They also have a bird sanctuary so we also had a walk around there and saw some amazing and fascinating birds.  This was the world's largest aviary and was self guided around a 1.2 km trail.  It was a lovely walk until we got to the part where there was a pond and some water birds including flamingos who all completely blocked the path (did I mention this was a one way route?).  

Slowly as we edged towards the path most of the birds slowly walked out of the way except one and this fella was not moving for anything.  Steve tried to edge past him but he reached out and almost pecked him!  I was all for going back to the start but as I turned around the way we came was now blocked by the other birds.  Given it is springtime in South Africa this place wasn't exactly buzzing so I was a little bit unsure on how we proceed and was trying to not get too panicky but I did feel pretty trapped.  

Eventually the bird moved out of the way and we could continue the course.  

That evening we headed back into Knysna and had some lovely food by the little waterfront.

It is such a beautiful little town on the garden route and a nice couple of days there.