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Getting down to the bottom of things (like continents!)…
April 12th, 2012 mfmccl13
Today we are leaving De Hoop and with it, we leave behind the beautiful coast, a jam-packed academic schedule, rogue baboons, breath-taking sunsets 
, and torrential rains. In many ways this middle portion of the semester has been my favorite all thanks to the beach – our first stop when we arrived in De Hoop. Thinking the water would be as frigid and uninviting as Cape Town, I opted to go sans bathing suit. A quick toe-test, however, revealed the warm, luxurious waters of the Indian Ocean! I couldn’t help but go in fully clothed and bask in the gentle waves. Our beach outing was brief as we had a great deal of preparation to do for the conservation lectures each student was to give, as well as the corresponding debate series of conservation issues and the corresponding final exam. On top of all this, my FFP group was due to complete and turn in the final draft of our crocodile report.
With our nerves on overdrive, we each lectured the class on a topic within conservation biology covering such areas as ethics, the state of biodiversity, protected area design, and hierarchical patch dynamics. After several days of cramming island biogeography and metapopulation theories, the history and creation of conservation, and the drivers behind the current paradigm shift occurring in the field, we wrote a 3-hour exam on Easter Sunday. That morning, dreary-eyed and overloaded with study material, we awoke to discover an Easter egg hunt spanning the entire grounds. The Easter Bunny had come to South Africa! It was a great way to get us all to unwind and wake up before our exam and the chocolate definitely helped boost our morale. We ended the day dying Easter eggs and watching movies as the rain pounded outside.
Perhaps the most exciting part of our stay in De Hoop was the rambunctious primates with which we shared our camp. For those of you who have never been directly threatened and chased by a baboon, which I would reckon is probably most of you, there is really nothing that gets your blood flowing than staring down the beady eyes of a fellow primate who just so happens to have 3-4 inch razor-sharp canines. These suckers have figured out how to open doors and can let themselves it at their leisure if not secured properly. We had a good 5 large male baboons raid our dorms throughout our stay, chasing us around our rooms screaming before breaking through windows or being chased out by our program director. Truly an unforgettable experience and a great way to tear our brains away from studying!
The other component of our time in De Hoop was field work for a project in the rocky intertidal zone 
! We surveyed 20 tidal pools for their plant and animal species
as well as pool size and distance from the shore to see if spatial distribution affects species diversity. The most exciting moment came when we found a charismatic octopus!
Our last day in De Hoop was a day off and we got to visit Cape Agulhas 
– the southern-most tip of the African continent! 
What a day! We were all overcome with elation realizing how close we were to Antarctica and the sheer joy of hopping back and forth between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
We are now on our way back to Cape Town for a one-night stay before hopping on a plane to Johannesburg and driving back to our home base in Skukuza. With only three weeks left to go, we are all gearing up for our final projects. But, it is still too soon to think about leaving Africa, although it is truly amazing to look back at how far we’ve come since arriving. There is still so much left to experience, many more game drives to go on, many more laughs to be had, and many more animal encounters to experience – after all, TIA! This is Africa!
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