Great ideology creates great times!

Continued pumpovers and punchdowns yesterday. That process is getting much easier because the the skins all rise to the top pretty quickly, and stay up there. Balling has started to go down quickly (20.5 yesterday, down from 23.3 on Friday) and temperature is rising nicely (24 degrees C up from 20). This means that the little yeast dudes are doing their job by eating up sugars and crapping out alcohol. Good to know that we're not just, as Kris likes to say, making really expensive grape juice. It's looking pretty good all in all. The color is a nice, vibrant deep purple.

We've also begun an informal process of leisurely removing the seeds from the tank. They tend to settle at the bottom and come out in a clump at the beginning of a pumpover, so we've started to just set them aside. They don't add anything to the wine except for some unwanted tannins (as opposed to the desired tannins from the skins).

Today we added 80 grams of ammonia for the yeasties to munch on, and 80 grams of grape tannins because that's what we were told to do. I was on top of the tank for the first pumpover today, and the wine smell was incredibly strong. People like to swirl in the glass and stick their nose in, but I think the best way to catch the aroma of a wine is to put your nose directly above 800 liters of it.

Yesterday was pretty eventful. After a day of hanging out around the office/tasting room, I'd just headed back to the cottage and thought about going for a run when I got a call from Kris asking for help back at the cellar. I rushed back to find that the barrel cellar, down under the restaurant and home of about 250 barrels of maturing wine from the 2009 vintage, was under about 6 inches of murky water. Really gross-looking stuff. We quickly set up the pump to pull water out and send it into the drain out back where harvest takes place. It went to work for about ten minutes, when I heard a loud cascade of water coming from the back corner of the room -- all the water that we were pumping out was circulating right back in. Bleh. We switched to pump into a different drain, and eventually diagnosed the problem -- the roots of a tree outside had grown and created a blockage in one of the drainage pipes, so that all of the wastewater from the cellar was diverted directly into the barrel cellar. This included water, cleaning chemicals, grape skins, sand, dirt, and who knows what else. The chief worry was that all the stuff in the wastewater would get on the barrels and seep into the wine, ruining the entire '09 vintage. Having seen all that goes into harvesting (still with 1/2 the farm to go) and winemaking, I can confidently say that it would have totally sucked. Spent the evening pumping and cleaning.

Added 450 grams of tartaric acid this morning at around 6:30 while doing a pumpover. Got a bit better at the pumpover process, though we had some trouble because grape skins kept coming out the bottom while we were trying to pump only liquid to the top. Supposedly by tomorrow it will be easier because the skins will have risen completely to the top of the tank.

We'll do pumpovers at around 1:30 this afternoon and 10 this evening. Hopefully we'll get the punchdown contraption, too, and do a couple of those.

Makin' wine, entry one

Think I mentioned earlier that Kris recently bought three 600 liter tanks in the cellar for a personal winemaking project. He's brought me on board for this project, so now we're makin some wine!

It began on Tuesday -- the first bit of the cabernet sauvignon harvest came from block 4, and went straight into the first little tank. I was making deliveries at the time, but I got an invite to a Google document giving the critical stats for day one. The balling (sugar level) into the tank was 24.7. Temperature going in was 22 degrees Celsius. Rest of the info is here:

Harvested from Block 4 Rows 1-3

Pallet 1 (30 crates, 511kg, 25ºC) arrived at Cellar 1216

Pallet 2 (26 crates, 415.5kg, 25ºC) arrived at Cellar 1220 Grapes stored in cool room, sorting began at ~1530 and ended at ~1700

Sorting focused on usual stuff plus added emphasis on micro-berries; quality is good overall

Only sketchy moment was when it started drizzling mid-sort; hopefully impact is minimal

Total taken into tank C aka "Dear Leader" estimated at ~ 773.2kg

Added 12gm Lafase HE Grand Cru

Added 100ml 18% Bisulfite

Added 600gm Vin-Oak MT

Added 450gm Tartaric Acid

The naming scheme for the three tanks is still up in the air. Kris favors naming this tank "Dear Leader" and putting a picture of Kim Jong-il on the tank, though we're not sure whether the Korean Noble Hill distributors would think that is ok. This led to a conversation suggesting various other crazy world leaders as names for the other two tanks. Nothing was settled except that we aren't naming the other two tanks Mugabe and Allende. Those dudes aren't funny.

This evening we added yeast -- 150 grams. I have been nicknamed the yeastmaster, though sadly I don't think that will fit on a vanity license plate. We brought 1.5 liters of a mixture of water and must (grape juice/skins) up to 35 degrees C, then added special winemaking yeast to it. It frothed up and kind of looked like the head of a freshly-poured glass of Coke. Smelled like bread (well, like yeast?). Let it sit for ten minutes, then added more must to bring the temperature down, then added it all into the tank.

Also, learned how to do a pumpover this evening, and did our first. A pumpover is a way of mixing up everything in the tank, and giving it a bit of oxygen. That's my understanding at least. Anyway, we shot the must out of the tank into a big bucket and set up a pipe in the bucket, attached to a pump, attached to another pump that goes into the top of the tank. Spent ten minutes shooting must through those pipes using that setup. Starting tomorrow, we'll do three pumpovers each day, and three punchdowns each day (pushing down all the skins in the must to the bottom of the tank). Also adding another 450 g tartaric acid.

Also, more cabernet harvesting tomorrow! Better finish up this Glen Carlou Grand Classique and head to sleep!

Long week

Started a big one -- cabernet sauvignon harvest began on Tuesday. Long day, including a brutal Tuesday -- up at 3:30, sort grapes til 11:30, deliver lots of wine until 5ish, etc. Hoping to finish up this big block tomorrow.

Played pickup ultimate on Monday after trying to kitesurf but being thwarted by the lack of wind. Luckily that meant a less windy day for frisbee. Thinking about switching gears on kitesurfing a bit. New plan is probably to work on my board skills by going to this cable pulley wakeboarding place in Strand for a couple of hours. Then maybe a trip to Langebaan, a lagoon north of here a ways. Learning in a place with waves is really tough -- a calm shallow area is pretty ideal for getting started. Think it'll be worth the extra drive and somewhat higher expense.

Also, just bought plane tickets to France/Italy/Paganello. Pretty pumped for that.

Temporary shutdown on the pictures front. I had the camera in my pocket went I went into the Bay Hotel pool on Sunday. That was dumb. Hopefully I'll get that (or a replacement) up and running shortly.

Weekend

Kris and I had our second weekend off this past weekend. Nice to have some 100% free days to kick around and do stuff. Also kind of nice that they are just infrequent enough that we feel obligated to try and make the most of them.

I'd been texting with the kitesurf school people all week, getting wind and weather updates, and they finally told me on Friday that things were looking good. Headed to Muizenberg in the early afternoon to find a pretty strong and gusty onshore wind. Headed right to the water and spent the next two hours making all of the various beginner mistakes and either getting pulled onto my face or not getting powered enough to get up on the board. Swallowed a ton of water. Waterstarting is definitely the hardest thing that I've had to learn. There are just so many things to remember -- how much power to give the kite, face the front of the board downwind(ish), don't pull on the bar, front leg straight and back leg bent, etc. One of those things where until you've gotten it right enough times that it all becomes natural, you have to think through every element every time. Hard to do. I did manage to get up on the board a few times, which was just enough excitement to get me heading back there for another lesson this afternoon.

Met Kris at the gym from there, grabbed some sushi right off of Long St. (which was swamped with people on a Friday night -- we couldn't even imagine what it will look like during the World Cup) then back to Paarl.

Had big plans to go Kayaking down the Berg River on Saturday, but it was oppressively hot. 100, or something like that. Decided that the day would be better spent in air conditioning, so we called an audible and went wine tasting.

First went to L'Ormarins in Franschhoek, which is a big old estate that started in the 17th century. They have a Motor Museum with tons of cool old cars, which we checked out. I don't know squat about cars, but some of the older ones from the 20s and 30s were pretty sweet. They then took us in a golf cart through the estate up to their tasting room, where we tried three whites, three reds, and their port. Of the whites, the Anthonij Rupert Nemesia blend was great. Their sangiovese is nice and tomato-ey (had had it with dinner a few weeks ago). Their bordeaux blend is super smooth, though without much body. I loved their port -- had some savory flavors that made it taste like something other than pure sugar.

Went from there to Glen Carlou, a farm right on our road which has a much more modern feel than L'Ormarins. Briefly checked out their art collection then tasted their wines - there were a lot. Their gravel quarry cabernet sauvignon was great but pricy. Their regular cab seemed like a better deal. By this point we had drank a lot of wine, and called it a day. Headed back to Noble Hill to take the doggies for a swim in the upper dam, which is always a highlight. Went from there to see some polo match at Val de Vie, and had some delicious food on the deck overlooking the polo field. Stayed after the match for a while and snuck into some wedding photos that were being taken as a wedding party was dying down.

Sunday, headed to Camps Bay to check out the scene. It was very windy and too crowded, but we made the most of it by sneaking into the Bay Hotel to go hang out by their nice quiet pool. The key is to pick the fanciest establishments possible and look like you know what you're doing. The theory being that the staff at a fancier place is less likely to harass you because they know that if they question someone who actually belongs at the place, there will be hell to pay. (We also later tested this theory at the Taj downtown when we were looking for a place to take a leak - another success). Spent all afternoon reading, drinking coffee and water, and pretending to belong.

Here's a view from the lounge chair at the Bay Hotel pool:

Kanonkop

The clouds creeping over Kanonkop, the mountain overlooking the farm, looked really cool. Picture doesn't quite capture it. Oh well.

Also, mom demanded that I put myself in pictures. Here is me.

Harvest

Got up at 3:30 this morning for the savignon blanc harvest. After lots of cleaning and a few technical difficulties, we got going at around 8 or 9 and harvested til around 4:30. Here's what harvest looks like:

That's the farm in the background. The further table in the picture is where the grapes start out in bunches, then get sorted. Raisins and bad bunches get thrown out. Then the grapes go through this gauntlet of machinery that moves them around like the ball in a game of mouse trap. They go through a big de-stemmer machine, then emerge at the table in the foreground of the picture, where they get sorted a second time (this is where I tend to spend most of my time). Here's a picture of the second sorting table from today:

Smaller stems, any unwanted grapes, and the occasional ladybug get removed. Then, the juice and grape skins get sent over to the big press which, when it is full, presses out the rest of the grape juice into a bin underneath. That juice is outrageously sweet -- the sugars are what eventually turn into the booze. From the bin, it gets transported to one of the big tanks in the cellar. (Red wine is a bit different -- the juice spends time in the tank with the skins before getting pressed). From there, the winemaking process starts. Don't fully know what goes into that yet, but I will. I did some yeast-adding at one point last week. Plus, Kris recently got three small tanks that we are going to use to make some very small batch wines on our own. That should be really fun, and a good way to get to know the full process.

Totally unrelated: listened to the radio while briefly in the car today. A Cape Town station had sent one of their "reporters" to Dallas for the NBA All-Star game. His report was amusingly bad. He kept raving about all the superstars he saw, but could only think of Lebron James, and "Dwayne Howard" when asked to list them. He also said how amazed he was when "Nate Johnson" of the Knicks won the slam dunk contest. I briefly felt really smug after hearing that awful report, until the gas station attendant made fun of me for having no idea about some big rugby match that happened last weekend. Oops. Think I'll at least learn the rules of that sport so I can know what people are talking about. That and cricket.

Oubaii and Garden Route

Kris and I took an extremely quick trip down the Garden Route at the end of last week. I didn't know too much about the area except that it is considered a thing to do, and that there’s more green stuff there than in most parts of South Africa.

About 4 hours into the 4.5 hour drive I fell asleep while reading in the passenger seat. I woke up when we slowed down at some security gate to enter Oubaai. I was disoriented both because I was waking up from a short nap and because Oubaai is a totally bizarre place. It is a very new, planned-feeling golf community that is basically centered around a golf course designed by Ernie Els within the last ten years. There are a bunch of vacation condos there, a Hyatt that opened in December, and a bunch of high-end shops to go along with them. So everything is very well-manicured and fancy-seeming, but there was almost no one there. The Hyatt hotel staff outnumbered everyone else that was around by about 5:1.

We went immediately to the meeting with the wine shop right by the golf course, which went fine. It is owned by an enthusiastic husband and wife duo who love their wine. She had been an attorney until giving that up to open this shop. That went fine – they are interested in distributing Noble Hill in the area.

From there we checked into the Hyatt and went up to our room, which was super nice. Hard to not enjoy a fancy hotel room, even in the creepiest of locations. Here are a couple of pictures of the balcony outside our room. As far as we could tell, most of the condos pictured were entirely unfurnished.

By the time we got there, had the meeting, and settled in, it was too late in the day to do anything like go check out the nearby beaches or see the town of George, which is like 15 minutes from there. (George didn’t sound too exciting anyway. I don’t have the guidebook in front of me, but it said something like “Unless you are a golfer or a steamtrain enthusiast, George isn’t a particularly exciting place to go.” I am neither a golfer nor a steamtrain enthusiast). We resolved that there would definitely be at least 16 hours worth of stuff to do to entertain us in Oubaai, so even though we were setting ourselves up in the premise of a horror movie we decided to hang around there. Trip to the hotel gym, drinks at the bar, dinner at the hotel restaurant. Dinner was bad – the restaurant lights dimmed and brightened drastically every 7 seconds or so. They claimed that it was on an automatic timer that had Gone Rogue, and that it was supposed to dim and brighten every 20 seconds or so. I think even that would have been terrible. We ate our overcooked food in elongated strobe lighting. Then watched Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Big delicious room service breakfast in the morning almost made up for the bad dinner.

Because we wanted to get back to Paarl in the afternoon (merlot harvest was still going after starting the previous afternoon), we took off right after breakfast, but managed to make a couple stops along the way to actually see some less phony towns along the garden route.

First, we went down a winding hill from Oubaai to Herold’s bay, a tiny little beach town that had a bunch of vacation/rental houses, a hotel or two, a couple little shops, and a beach. Granted it was a Friday during the day, but it was also not very happening. Despite it being an ok beach day, there were about 5 people on the beach. Here are a couple of pictures from the beach. We stopped there for about 10 minutes to look around before moving on.

Mossel Bay, a larger Garden Route town, was also on our way back. It had a seemingly endless stretch of beach that went all the way around the big bay. We almost decided to just give up on getting back and making a beach day of it, but decided not to. Instead we grabbed a cup of coffee where we had a nice view of a few surfers on the bay and a cool little lighthouse. Here’s the view from there:

Made it back to Paarl in the afternoon, and had a pretty busy weekend. Went out to the Funky Buddha in Paarl, the town’s only nightclub (more on that some other time, maybe). Medium-busy on Saturday working in the tasting room. Dinner with some of Kathleen’s friends at the new Bombay Brasserie in the newly built Taj Hotel in Cape Town. Very busy Valentine’s Day – fully booked in the restaurant and for picnics, so I helped make picnic baskets, ran a tasting or two, helped Vivi the guitar player/singer settle in before she minstreled her way around the restaurant and lawn, and ran a couple of errands. Now off to Col’Cacchio in Franschhoek for dinner. Will get to check out how Franschhoek is doing. There was a huge fire there for a few days in the last week or so – we could see a red glow over one of the mountains for a while, then lots of smoke, then little bits of ash were falling on us in Paarl. I suspect it is soot-city over there.

Update 1

I type this from the passenger seat of Kris’ Toyota Tazz, en route from Paarl to George, a South African town on the Garden Route. Google lists it as a five hour trip heading east, though we’re hoping to do it in four and change to get to a meeting with a wine shop in George that wants to be the Noble Hill distributor in the area. It is a hot and winding drive through lots of valleys – a mix of dead-seeming plains, the occasional ostrich farm, and rows of grape vines. Kris points out that the vines are generally poorly kept – we suspect they are owned by some of the large-volume wine producers who sacrifice care and quality for the ability to have a ton of land and produce a ton of wine. We’ll get to George in a few hours and hopefully get to check out the Garden Route a little bit tonight and tomorrow morning before trying to get back to Paarl tomorrow mid-afternoon.

I couldn’t find my digital camera before I left for South Africa, so most of my early adventures have gone unrecorded. I’ve taken possession of Kris’ camera, though, so my hope is to do a better job of recording my time here with words and pictures (I’m not secure enough/disciplined enough in my writing to do it with words alone). I’ll do my best to spend this road trip getting up to speed.

I arrived exhausted and jetlagged from my Etihad Airways flights (NY – Abu Dhabi – Jo’burg – Cape Town) early on a Friday morning. Kris picked me up and we ate some breakfast in Paarl before heading back to the farm, where I started to get settled in. They have me staying at the guest cottage on the farm, which is where Kris had lived until I arrived. He’s now moved back into the main house with his mom, Kathleen. I felt bad for giving him the boot, but he is in the process of having a house built for him at the very top of the farm; it will be ready in May.

The cottage is great. It has a nice-sized bedroom, a living room/kitchen and a bathroom. The only thing missing is a stove in the kitchen, but I’ve been getting along easily without that. Here's a bad picture of the view from the porch:

The farm itself is stunning. Having been there for three weeks now, I note myself starting to take the views and scenery of it for granted from time to time. I try to remind myself to look around and appreciate its beauty as much as possible. No matter where you are on the farm, there are views of the (well-manicured) rows of vines, hills of Paarl and Simondium, and mountains in the background.

The cellar, tasting room, and restaurant area is also beautiful. Kris and Kathleen take pride in their attention to detail, and the result is a really great place for customers to come to taste the wine, have a picnic, or eat breakfast/lunch at Cosecha, the restaurant (Latin American cuisine, very tasty).

As Kris had predicted, I’ve been working on a wide variety of tasks since I’ve been here. I’ve spent a few days working in the cellar with Rodney (the cellar manager) and his crew. We’d mostly been getting ready for harvest, which started just a few days ago. This involved lots of cleaning and organizing things. They just built a bunch of cold storage buildings for keeping crates of wine, barrels, and other stock for the restaurant and winery, so we spent a while getting the loose crap out of the cellar and into its proper place so that there would be lots of room for harvest to go smoothly.

On the slightly more lawyerly front, I’ve taken on a project of improving our compliance with IPW, an overseer of wine farms in South Africa. They audited the farm last September and we got an acceptable score with room for improvement. This has involved checking out our operations and making sure that we’re using proper practices to make good wine, keep full and appropriate records during the process, and minimize/eliminate the cellar’s negative impact on the environment. This is and will be an ongoing project – most recently, with the start of harvest, I’ve got us keeping relatively detailed records of the status of the grapes that we harvest (temperature, weight, time, etc).

I’ve also done a small amount of work around the tasting room. Kris and Kathleen have decided to start alternating weekends of work, with Kris and I working the tasting room every other weekend. I can’t say that my skills at talking about wine are any good just yet, but I’m at least starting to get a better handle of the wines that we are currently tasting (Sav Blanc, Merlot, Cab, Shiraz-Mourverdre, the 1674 – a Bordeaux-style blend, and the recently bottled Chardonnay ’09). The plan is to try to do a bunch of tastings while I’m here since there are so many nearby farms and get my taste buds up to speed without becoming a “wine douche” (as Erin has delicately termed it).

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’ve been going on deliveries around Paarl, Stellenbosch, and Cape Town. I went with Kris for the first few days while I got used to the protocol and the city, then went on my first solo set of deliveries on Tuesday. This has given me a nice opportunity to see and get to know our clients (restaurants, hotels, and liquor stores mostly), and also figure out my way around Cape Town. The plan on delivery days is usually to head into town around midday once rush hour has ended, make the deliveries for a few hours, then go to one of the Virgin Active gyms in Cape Town to wait out the rush hour traffic going back out to Paarl.

Harvest got started on Monday, when we harvested the Chardonnay. Monday was a long day – we didn’t start harvesting until around 8 or 9 a.m. after cleaning all the equipment. We were also somewhat understaffed on the grape sorting tables, so we worked through until around 10:15 p.m.. My only meal that day was breakfast at around 10 a.m., so I was pretty grumpy by the end. Worse, pretty much everything in Paarl was closed by the time we got done – a drive-thru McDonalds finally saved the day, though. The Chardonnay harvest continued on Tuesday, though I was gone for deliveries. When I got back, things were pretty crazy because Solly, one of the cellar workers and a good dude as far as I could tell from the lots of work we had done together and small amount we’d been able to communicate with each other, had gotten his hand stuck in the big press machine. Apparently it was very bad – broken bones and severed tendons. He had surgery that evening and has another one scheduled for Saturday. Hopefully he comes out alright. It was a sobering reminder to everyone that enormous farm equipment is dangerous.

Harvest continued today with Viognier this morning, which was only about 1.5 tons. Merlot harvest was about to start as Kris and I left for George. The harvest period in all should continue for about another month.

My plans for entertainment while I’m here were to check out the Ultimate scene in Cape Town, and also to learn how to kitesurf. Both have gone pretty well so far.

For Frisbee, I got in contact with the powers that be in the CT community and found my way onto a team called Chilli – apparently they’ve won the last couple of national championships here. I went out to one day of summer league to play with them against the University of Cape Town (UCT) team. The quality of play was certainly lower than in the states – my 2009 WUDI summer league team would give Chilli a tight game -- but it was nice to get out there and throw around. The Ultimate community is a great tool for travel; it’s just big enough that there is a place to play pretty much anywhere you go, but small enough that it is easy to get involved. At summer league there was one Dartmouth dude that I hadn’t met before and an Oregon dude that I’d played against a zillion times in college.

I’m pretty excited about kitesurfing right now. I resolved to learn it while I was in the Bahamas and saw that it is possible on both the ocean side and the bay side there and heard that it is popular in Cape Town. I found a place in Muizenberg that will give you lessons and then deduct the cost of those lessons if you decide to buy the equipment – pretty perfect for me, since I’d been planning to learn and then buy the equipment anyway if I liked it and was decent at it. Only questionable part of the operation is the fact that one of the instructors, who now just works at the shop, has a broken ankle from kitesurfing. Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, especially for someone who already has mush for ankles. I’ve taken two lessons now with this Polish girl Patty. The first was on an extremely gusty day. I just learned about the kiting part of things on that day, and practiced kiting on the beach with the training kites and then a very small kitesurfing kite. Kris joined me for that lesson, though he couldn’t make the second – he isn’t quite as enthusiastic as me about it, but I might get him to come out again. In the second lesson, I got out into the water and did some body dragging – using the kite to pull me through the water while I lie on my stomach. I got decent at that and had a bit of time left in the lesson so tried to add the board to things. That didn’t go so well. My hope is that by my next lesson (sometime next week?) I’ll have the whole thing down and will be able to get out there on my own. I think it’s going to be really fun, and is something that I’ll be able to do in lots of places.

Aside from those ongoing fun activities, we’ve had a few other noteworthy adventures. On the Tuesday after I got here, there was a beginning-of-the-year management meeting, followed by a sail on a large boat out in the harbour leaving from the V&W Waterfront. The view from the water was great. It was my first time seeing Cape Town, and I got to see the whole city on a beautiful day with big-ole Table Mountain in the background. The plan had been to sail around Robben Island (where Mandela was imprisoned), but we saw that there were whales around, which was rare for so late – usually they aren’t in so close past November. We saw 6ish whales, and got within around 50 meters. While on a cool sailboat, eating delicious snacks and drinking wine. Then we all went out for dinner in Cape Town. Here's a view from the bay that I stole from the internet:

The stadium in the foreground is Green Point Stadium, built for the upcoming World Cup 2010.

Last weekend, on our first weekend off, Kris and I took a trip down to Cape Point. On the way there, we went on this great scenic route along the water – Chapman’s Peak. We stopped once because the view overlooking Hout Bay was too great to drive by. We went and parked at the Cape of Good Hope, the “southwesternmost point of Africa.” From there we the hiking path and went along a ridge overlooking the water. Views were great. We saw Diaz Beach from the path on the mountain, and decided to climb down to it because it looked so nice. Bad idea. The wind picked up the sand and launched it at us – tiny little particle bullets stinging every bit of exposed skin. The only escape was down by the water, which was freezing-ass cold. Once we escaped from Diaz we hiked over to Cape Point (which informed me that I’m ~15,000 km from New York) and down to the lighthouse point. Good views all around. Wish I had a camera then – oh well. We saw some baboons on the drive back. There was a mother and some really cute little ones in the road in front of us, which we admired. Then this huge alpha male baboon stood up from the side of the road looked at us, and started walking towards us in a way that seemed angry to me, though it probably is just the way he walks anywhere. “Don’t make eye contact!” I said. We didn’t, and he passed on by as we high-tailed it back to Cape Town for dinner and then on to Paarl.

Here's a picture of the painful Diaz beach, probably taken from around Cape Point, with the ridge overlooking the Cape of Good Hope behind it:

Also found on the internet using the same google image search, here are two pictures of Cameron Diaz on a beach:

Here are some Cape Point baboons lifted from someone else's blog (I'll start to create my own pictures now that I have a camera):