There are many things that happen on the World Race that are serious. There are other things that happen that are just plain ridiculous. Sometimes, things happen that are so serious that they end up being ridiculous. This was one of those times.
From my perspective:
Some of the girls had gone into the bathroom at the beach to change into our swimsuits. While we were in there we heard screaming from outside, but we figured it was just our teams being crazy as usual. Ana-Lisa and I were the last ones to go out, and we were in for quite the surprise.
We left the bathroom and started walking back towards the group. Almost immediately we were surrounded by giant, angry baboons. If you are thinking cute little monkeys, think again! Baboons are very large and have enormous pointy teeth that they bare when hissing at you. Instinct told us to scream and run away, which is exactly the opposite of what you are supposed to do when surrounded by baboons. So, of course, we screamed and ran away, causing the baboons to freak out and chase us and bare those lovely teeth and scare the crap out of us.
Eventually we realized the error of our ways and stopped running. Once the baboons stopped freaking out we then had to calmly walk back through the crowd of them to our friends. Not the easiest thing to do when they were just trying to maul us. We made it, having lost only a water bottle in the process.
From everyone else’s perspective:
When we arrived at the beach there was one lonely baboon chilling in the grass near the sand. As everyone got out of the van and headed toward the beach, that baboon sneakily meandered over to the van and slid inside through the window we had stupidly left open. It quickly stole someone’s lunchbox and headed for the hills. One of the guys started chasing it down, when all of a sudden about twenty baboons came swarming over the hill. They headed straight for the van and attacked it. When that didn’t prove fruitful they made their way over to the bathrooms, which is of course right when we came out.
Thankfully we are all ok and can laugh at this incident in hindsight! It really is one of those things that would only happen on the World Race, which is why I wanted to share it with you!
