Honduras, Roatan (Sloths) 2016-02-22

Best. Day. Ever. Our friends John and Lisa from S/V Morningstar took the lovely Shelley and I on an excursion to cuddle some sloths. I freaking love sloths. There were lots of them in Panama, and it was really exciting when we went out in the evening to find a random sloth hanging off a tree or creeping along a power line. But they usually only come down from the trees at night, so the only pictures I have are of blurry grey shapes lurking in the darkness. Occasionally they would hide in the electrical box near the La Playita anchorage during the day, because it was much cooler in there. But for the most part we didn't really get to play with them.



It just so happens that there’s a little zoo thing near the anchorage here in Roatan. I don't do zoos. I don't like seeing animals in cages, and I don't support places that cage up animals. But I decided to give in just this once so that we could see the sloths. I don't think they’re native to Honduras, but the climate here is exactly the same as in the neighbouring countries where they're abundunt, such as Panama and Costa Rica.

I was hoping it would be more like a sanctuary than a zoo, but there were still animals in cages. We were the only ones there and it wasn’t a big place (we’d certainly never heard of it). The friendly owners were probably just looking after the animals in their backyard to start with and they figured they may as well charge tourists to see them. There were a few smaller animals in big cages (three racoons and a few of the native watusas that you see everywhere near the marina). There was also a spider monkey in a cage and another one on a long leash, which I hated. But he was on a leash so he could live in a little tree house and still hang out in the trees without running off. I didn't like it, but he seemed pretty happy playing up in the branches. Spider monkeys can be pretty aggressive if they want to be, so I doubt they would last very long running around with the people on the island. The one in the cage was very possessive of the guy showing us around - Mr monkey reached out and grabbed our guides hand, wrapping fingers around his arm and pulling him closer. The guy said that because they play with them every day and are close with them, the spider monkeys don't like anybody else taking away their attention.


John with a spider monkey. They were very different to the spider monkeys we saw in Panama

There were also capuchin monkeys. Lots of them. They were in two huge cages, with a few running wild around the place. I was trying to figure out why they didn't let more monkeys out to play, when the guys working there found us a sloth.



The sloths were just hanging out in the trees, but there was one close to the ground with a little baby clinging to her stomach. It was pretty much the cutest thing I've ever seen in my life. The baby was sooo little and sooo cute! The pair were munching on leaves together and being adorable, when a capuchin monkey came along and peeled one of her hands off the branch. Then it peeled another hand off. They move so slowly and the monkeys are so quick, it was very easy for them to just drop the sloths off the branches. When the guys yelled at it, the monkey tried to pick up the baby. It was being an absolute terror. The guys said that the monkeys loved causing trouble and that they’re always trying to drop the sloths into the water. This one in particular needed to be watched all day because of the little baby. So that's why most of the capuchins were locked up…



Our friendly guide went about finding us a sloth near the ground who wasn't trying to look after a tiny little baby. This was the one he came back with.


Shelley with our new friend

Sloths are just ridiculous! He was so chilled out and relaxed. When the guy picked him up, he pretended his arms were branches so the sloth just gripped onto his hands and was slowly moved onto us. They look so silly hanging in the air! You could tell these guys cared about the animals, which made me feel better about the whole cages situation - they showed us where to put our hands so the little guy would be supported properly, and our slothy friend was handled like a delicate baby.

John with the sloth

He seemed perfectly content to just cling onto us. He looked around every once and a while, and we we were told he was slowly trying to decide which tree he was going climb up onto once we were done. This seemed like a decision that he wasnt going to make easily… there was a lot of pondering going on in his little head. I could just picture him sitting back in an armchair slowly sipping a cup of tea and thinking about his options for the entire afternoon. He made no signs of wanting to move any time soon, and just sat there quietly.





I nearly died when it was my turn. It was like cuddling a koala bear that doesn't stink, isn't going to go to the toilet on you and has no interest in scratching your eyes out. He wrapped his arms around my neck, holding onto my back with his claws. The claws were very long but not at all sharp. I was tempted to just walk off with my cuddly little friend, and I don't think he would have minded. But I think we would have had some concerned caretakers chasing after us!







After we were done cuddling him, John placed him back onto a tree with the help of our young leader. He looked around and very slowly made his way back up into the branches, trying to find the perfect spot to hang from.


Inspecting the branch

We went to check on the baby again before we left, and I nearly died when I saw the other caretaker playing with it. Sloths only produce milk for two weeks and they only carry their babies for a few months. After that they're on their own. This one was still very small, but it was starting to look around as it gets ready to explore on its own.



I'm not sure sure if the monkeys were messing with it or if it was being returned from an exploratory mission, but the guy had it sitting on his chest. It looked so tiny next to a full grown person! It was just this little furry ball clinging to his shirt. I got the impression that they didn't handle it very often and I've never seen two boys fuss over something so carefully before. They agreed to let me hold the baby when I nearly exploded from excitement and cuteness, but I'm not sure they were very confident about it. I was given very specific instructions on how to hold it. The little thing fit right in my hand! I held my hand out to support it and it latched onto me, wrapping both legs around the bottom of my hand. It gripped on tight!




You can just see his tiny little claws clinging onto the bottom of my right hand

The boys weren't happy with that, so they detached it from me and then placed it on my shirt, where it could grip with tiny little claws. I nearly passed out from the cuteness overload.





I didn't get to play for long, because they wanted the bubba back on mum’s tummy. It's still very young and and I don't think they've really let anybody else handle it before. It wanted to go exploring along the branch, but eventually it snuggled into her fur and wrapped itself around her as much as it could. So. Cute.



We got to visit with some birds before we left, which was actually pretty cool. They had Macaws and some green parrots, both of which are native to Honduras. I think he Macaw is actually the national bird. I had no idea how big they were! We got to go in the enclosure and feed them, which was exactly like feeding a normal parrot...If the parrot was the size of a small dog and had the ability to bite off your hand along with the birdseed.





Xxx Monique

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Honduras, Roatan (Monkeys) 2016-02-20

Monkeys. That's what our whole lives revolve around now. Three cheeky, adorable little monkeys.

This little family of capuchins lives on the same island that the marina is on here in Roatan. They're the cutest things ever and Garth is in heaven. Their typical day involves visiting their favourite mangrove trees for breakfast, running around the island near their favourite mangrove trees, fishing for crabs,then making a total nuisence of themselves in the resort lobby. Sometimes they bug the animals in the chicken coop, and occasionally they visit the Tiki Palapa. Then they go to sleep.







Unfortunately, the people at anchor aren't allowed in the hotel lobby. So on two occasions Debbie and Steve have kept them entertained near the Palapa long enough for us to dinghy to shore and play with them. But that's it. Garth has been so frustrated knowing that we’re sharing an island with monkeys and we can't play with them.



But then we brought our boat in and tied up to the dock. Something we never do, but it was necessary in order to get some work done on our deck. We have to take all the sails down, and there isn’t really room to move around them while we’re at anchor! Plus we need both power and power tools to get the job done. So to the dock we went.




Garth has quickly become a ladder

And we happened to get the spot right in front of the monkey’s favourite trees.

For the last month or so, every morning has been the same. We’re woken by a cute little squeaking noise above our heads, and we open our eyes to see little monkey heads looking down at us. We have tried not to encourage them to get on the boat, but they're so damned cute… We usually just carry them off, or yell at them if they're trying to get inside or destroy things.




Early morning view from the dock

At first they wanted to play with everything. They would run round the cockpit, picking random things up and playing with them. Everybody calls the baby ‘Cheeky’ (He’s two years old and very much a terror). Then there’s his mum and possibly his grandmother (for a long time we thought she was his dad… she’s quite shy and hesitant to get too close. But after befriending her, closer inspection revealed that she is indeed a female). Cheeky must be teething. He doesn't have his big pointy teeth yet, and he puts everything he can find In his mouth and gnaws on it. Then he gets bored and drops it wherever he happens to be. Which is usually on a roof or over the water. So once he picks picks something up and wanders off with it, you had better hope that it's either waterproof or not valuable.


"Dad” has all his teeth!


Is Garth’s foot food?

They are one of the main tourist attractions here. Imagine getting off the plane in a foreign country, going straight to your hotel and into the lobby, and the first thing you see are tiny monkeys running around and jumping on all the tables and chairs. Cheeky loves people, and either jumps or climbs onto everybody looking for both new friends to play with and fun things to chew on. The hotel guests love it! They whip out their phones and take pictures of the adorable little critters. And then Cheeky snatches their phones, runs outside onto the roof or up a tree and chews on it until he gets bored. If they're lucky, he eventually gives it up. Maybe when he's a safe distance from the ground. Maybe not.


Cheeky

He knows that pockets and handbags have many exciting things inside them. So while you're coo-ing over the monkey sitting on your shoulder, he reaches down and steals your wallet. People have lost lots of things to their theiving nature, including expensive medications, dive cameras, phones, a rollex, and even a sat phone from inside somebody’s boat. Debbie put a hummingbird feeder up a while ago, and the monkeys swiftly dismantled it and stashed it somewhere. So they're pretty destructive!



He always thinks there might be things hidden down my top

But they're also adorable. We’ve been having a great time playing with them, getting up early every day as soon as the little monkey chatter starts up. Our friend Shelley walks her dog past our boat every morning and she swears they just sit in the trees staring at our boat, waiting for us to get up. They must eventually get impatient and then come over to wake us up!


I think he's still asleep...

At first they were having a great time picking things up and running off with them (although nothing of value!) Water bottles, Tupperware containers... anything in the cockpit that Cheeky can grab and run off with, he does. But after a while they stopped trying to rip our boat apart, and it was as if they just came to see us. In the beginning they would peer in at us through the hatch with their tails wrapped around the side of the boat as if it were a safety net. They didn't want to get too close in case it was dangerous.

Now Cheeky jumps up and down above our hatch, sticking his hands in trying to touch us. As soon as one of us sits up, he jumps on our heads. Then we have to get dressed with a monkey for a hat, trying to keep our heads outside the boat so he doesn’t think that it’s okay to come inside!


Trying to get dressed

Garth usually goes out via the companionway. As soon as Garth disappears from sight, Cheeky runs to the cockpit to wait for him. If Garth takes too long, the silly monkey comes back to the bow and peers in trying to find his giant friend. One day Garth was taking too long and the companionway was all shut up. I closed the bow as I climbed out (to make sure they couldn't get in!) and sat on the dock with some nuts ready to give Cheeky his treat. But Garth was still inside. Uninterested in treats, Cheeky ran back to the bow to see where he was, and started tugging up on the hatch trying to get it to open. He's smart enough to know which way to turn the handles, but not strong enough to actually do it. He just wanted to play with his buddy.



Some mornings he sticks his hands in through our hatch while we’re asleep, trying desperately to touch us. One day when Garth stuck his arm out to hold hands with Cheeky, the poor monkey started tugging on Garths arm in an attempt to get him to come out and play.



So Garth has made some new friends.

It's totally his own fault. These two rough house on the dock, wrestling and tumbling around together. Cheeky grooms him, pulling on his hair and occasionally trying to eat it. Cheeky often hangs upside down by his tail from the branches by our boat and Garth stands underneath him… they play fight in mid air, hairy arms flailing everywhere. They jump up and down together like idiots, and I think Garth could play with this little monkey all day long if I let him.

Usually they just visit in the morning. We feed them a few nuts or some fruit and they eventually get bored and go back to chasing crabs or mangrove nuts. Sometimes they snap the smaller branches and eat all the bugs that crawl out, and when there's seaweed in the water they fish it out and pick off whatever is crawling around in amongst the salty mess. When there's ants on the boat, I call Cheeky over and he immediately snatches them up one by one. They are definitely well fed!


Mangrove nuts (probably not their actual name)


Once he's worn himself out, Cheeky is all Zen

Garth has taken to sometimes sharing his breakfast with the monkeys instead of just handing out a few nuts. He’ll take an apple or banana outside with him and bite off some for himself, then hand a piece over to Cheeky. He peels off the skin of the banana and they gather around it like a couple of mischevious troublemakers. The silly bugger hates getting his hands sticky, so he sits there and eats it with no hands, just leaning forward whenever he wants a bite. With his hands held behind his back and he reminds me of one of those weighted drinking bird toys (the ones that repeatedly go up and down forever). If Garth doens’t pay enough attention, Cheeky will bob down and take a nibble straight from the banana. I hear him protesting from inside the boat, but I’m sure he’s secretly pleased with his naughty friend.



Sharing an apple

There’s not much fresh water on the island – it has to be trucked in from somewhere else. It hasn’t rained much for a while, which is why I think they like visiting our side of the island. It takes a long time for the sun to get above the trees and we’re in the shadows for most of the day (which is not helping our batteries or solar panels). But it’s good for the monkeys. In the morning there’s quite a bit of moisture on the leaves in the trees, which I’m sure is why they come by. But hat doesn’t seem to ever be enough for Cheeky. With no shower onboard, I try to fill up our solar camping shower from shore whenever I can. But when I forget or couldn’t be bothered, we use a 1.25L soda bottle with holes drilled in the lid as our shower. Even with our small tanks, 1L a day for showering isn’t that big of a deal. So the shower bottle lives in the cockpit… You probably see where I’m going with this. We usually bring them a cup of water in the morning, but one day I just grabbed the bottle. Cheeky quickly figured out that the bottle always has water in it, and that all he has to do is tip it up and it comes straight out. I keep finding him sitting in a tree or on the dock with my stolen bottle, drinking out of it like a baby.








There’s a boat just up the dock from us that has been left here for a few months, while the owners are overseas. Cheeky thinks it’s a playground. The dodger sags in the middle and the bimini is attached with bungy cord, so after he terrorizes us in the morning he heads straight to this boat and starts jumping up and down on the bimini like it’s a trampoline. Water collects in the middle of the dodger, so after he wears himself out jumping up and down he climbs down and drinks whatever he can find. Then he tries to jump up and down on the dodger but it doesn’t bounce, so he climbs back up onto the bimini so he can jump around some more. He’s exactly like a small child (or Garth… who often stands around bouncing up and down on the dock in time with Cheeky).


Taking a break from bouncing to scoop up some water

Another one of Cheeky’s favourite toys Is Freds little charcoal BBQ. The little munchkin thinks that Fred has put it there just for him. He even filled it with expensive charcoal with a smokey flavour (imported from the USA) so Cheeky would have little black balls to play with every morning. Freds boat is right in front of ours and he has a house on Roatan, so he doesn't often stay on board. Usually we hear the clang as Cheeky throws back the metal lid, which gives me just enough time to chase him away before he destroys everything. So I usually catch him as he's perched on the back of Freds boat, tasting the charcoal and then smashing it on the rails as he tries to break open the strange nuts. But sometimes we must not be awake early enough and Cheeky finds other things to entertain himself with until he decides to get us up. So occasionally we wake up to the sight of a little black monkey face peering down at us, a trail of charcoaly destruction between the two boats.





The monkeys have recently started coming back to visit later on in the day, well after their breakfast time. They have figured out that we are a constant source of entertainment. This has been problematic while we are fixing things, mostly because we have been leaving things on the dock that they’re not used to seeing. New things. Interesting things. Things small enough for them to play with. Unfortunately, they have developed a taste for alcohol after spending years hanging around the hotel lobby. The packages for the resort here are all inclusive, so people don’t pay much attention to their drinks. They can have as many as they want. So whilst the hotel staff try to pick up forgotten drinks, the monkeys are used to finding plastic cups and beer cans lying around. And they definitely know what to do with them. We accidentally left an empty beer can in the dinghy a while ago, which has become a good monkey alarm. Every time Cheeky goes past he sees the beer can and goes straight for it. He knows it was empty last time, but he’s always hopeful. He goes to drink out of it, finds it empty, and then drops it back into the dinghy. The rattling of the can being dropped always alerts us to their presence. It amazes me how smart they are… whenever they pick up a can they rotate it to get the hole to line up in the right place so they can drink out of it efficiently. If they just tipped it up they would still get the liquid, so they don’t really need to drink out of it like little people. But they still rotate it every time. They learn very quickly and they’re very smart.



Unfortunately, we’re mixing lots of small batches of epoxy to do some repairs on the deck. And we mix our epoxy in plastic cups. We have huge bottles of hardner and resin wich get tipped into smaller portions in plastic shot cups. That way it’s a lot easier to suck the right amount up with syringes and mix them together in normal sized cups (because the plastic flexes, it’s very easy to peel off the hardened epoxy and reuse the cups again later). So while I’m mixing them together and Garth is running around using the mixture, the source cups with epoxy and resin in them are left unguarded on a tarp. Needless to say, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to shoo monkeys away both from the appetizing cups and the wet epoxy smeared on our deck.

Whilst we play with them every day, they’ve been very good about staying out of the boat. A few boats on the dock have found both rats and boa constrictors onboard (the rats haven’t bothered anybody in a while after traps were laid out, but there’s not much you can do about the snakes… they normally just sun themselves on deck anyway). So to prevent any nasty surprises we close the hatches and put the boards in the companionway overnight. We often leave the companionway open during the day though, and Cheeky often sits on the top step looking down at us until we come out to play.



But the other day I was sitting in the saloon and I heard cooing from the bow. It sounded a lot like baby talk. I asked Garth what he was doing, but he didn’t reply. As I got up I heard ‘Hi sweetie! Do you want a cuddle?’ And as I stuck my head round the corner to the sounds of ‘You’re such a sweetie!’ I was met with the sight of my naughty husband cuddled up in bed with a monkey. Cheeky seemed perfectly happy to just sit still and cuddle in the bed, and Garth was quite pleased with himself. I tried to remove the both of them, but Garth can be very persuasive. He’s very good at making me laugh, which usually causes me to abandon whatever discipline I was trying inflict upon him. He looked up at me with a big grin and wide eyes and said ‘Look how cute he is!’ Then Cheeky stuck his tongue out and gave Garth a big hug. My husband is a huge sucker for monkey cuddles, so it took me a very long time to get the two of them out of bed and out of the boat. Garth refuses to behave when Cheeky is around. They’re both as bad as each other.




Xxx Monique

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Panama, Rio Chagres (Fort Lorenzo, Chagres river) 20151118

We finally made it to the Chagres river. After a week in Shelter bay and another few days anchored in Colon, constantly being knocked over from the wake of cargo ships, we have once again found paradise. The only anchorage for small boats near Colon and the only alternative to Shelter Bay Marina is out on the flats. So we dropped the hook for a few days to sort ourselves out. It was hell. The wake from boats going past was insane, and we would be woken in the middle of the night by things crashing onto the floor off the benches. We have had four obviously breakable things in the galley for the past few years - one ceramic coffee mug and 3 pyrex dishes. They have survived almost 17,000 nm of sailing, mostly upwind. One of them didn't survive Colon. The wake from the boats was so intense that one of my dishes managed to dislodge itself from inside our pot cupboard with so much force that it smashed on the floor (which is 2 inches below the cupboard). Plus the boats made SO much noise. They loved talking to each other! At all hours of the day, but more annoyingly at 5am, they would honk their booming ship horns at each other and then there would be another honk in reply. If they were feeling particularly chatty, this would go on for a while. So we are more than happy to be out of Colon.



This is our first river, and it's a bit bizarre how different it is. It might be just because we came from such a horrific anchorage, but it's really surreal being anchored in such flat, calm water. We found a few anchorages like this in the Perlas Islands in Panama, but the difference is that they were only calm when there was no wind. Here, our wind generator has been going all day. But we're in a river, so there's no waves or swell or nonsense. Just flat, calm water. I love it.



We woke up this morning to the sounds of the jungle. The real jungle. We are in the middle of the river, but not far from shore. So the howler monkeys were running around essentially just outside our front door. They make the most insane noises. Sometimes it sounds like a herd of cows dying, but it's hard to describe. Garth's input was that they could make up the soundtrack to a horror movie. They are loud, excessive and close by. It's surreal.

There are birds and animals absolutely everywere. I'm sure we can hear toucans, but I don't know what they sound like so i can't tell when they're chiming in with all the others. It was just wonderful waking up today to the sounds of monkeys and birds instead of being tossed out of bed to the background noise of things breaking and huge ships spelling out 'good morning' in morse code with their horns.

We went exploring today for the first time in a long time. It seems hard to believe because we've seen so many wonderful things over the last few months, but we have mostly stayed on the boat. I think we set foot on two islands while we were in the San Blas islands, and both times it was to burn our rubbish. So I was very excited to venture off into the jungle. We're all alone here, with no traffic going up the river and no cars coming down to the river. So it felt like old times to take the dinghy to shore and wander off on our own into an unknown area.



There's a fort at the entrance to the river, which was used in the 17th or 18th century to fight off pirates. I love exploring old ruins, and Panama seems to be rich in pirate history! It wasn't very far to walk, but it took us a bit longer than most because we were keeping a careful eye out for animals along the way. Monkeys, sloths and toucans are the wildlife of choice here. Unfortunately all we found was a squirrel, although he was adorable. We'd never seen one before either, so that was exciting.





We explored the ruins for ages, which was a lot of fun. Garth likes pointing out what each of the crumbling buildings would have been for when the fort was operational. He showed me the outline of where the drawbridge would have sat, which tower would have the best defence and where the ammo would have been stored. Who needs a tour guide when you have a Garth!





One of the interesting things about this fort was that they had lots and lots of cannons aimed behind them. They must have been very worried about being attacked by land as well as by sea. The fort at Portobello only had cannons aimed at the water, although it had walls everywhere to protect the people inside from attack. That fort had lots and lots of tiny windows, which were angled to be bigger inside. They allowed the people inside to see and shoot the people outside, but there was only a tiny hole for people to shoot through from the other side.



Fort Lorezo didn't have many of these walls, but it did have an awesome dry moat with a drawbridge, crumbling stairs to nowhere and lots of underground barracks you could walk through complete with echoing footsteps and slowly dripping water from above. There were even vultures circling above us, waiting to pounce on all the dead bodies. It was a pretty awesome place.





We had a picnic for the first time in a long time, which mostly consisted of fresh sourdough bread made from the starter gifted to us by Stefan in the San Blas islands. We layed our feast out on a crumbling wall overlooking our boat and hundreds of years of history, which was really lovely. We only saw three other people while we were there, a lovely couple and their guide. They showed us some amazing pictures of a sloth they had found down the road as she carried her baby across the road via some powerlines. I was dying to go on a sloth hunt after they told us it was amongst group of about 20 sloths, but it was getting late and we didn't want to walk 5km there and back to maybe find some sloths. So I will have to wait for another day.





We did find some amazing ants while we were at the fort. I first noticed them crossing a crumbling old path we were walking on, a trail of tiny dots carrying huge chunks of leaves back to their nest. And then we followed them. Ants were coming from everywhere, along trails that saw so much foot traffic from this ants nest that they had literally worn a path through the grass. In some places grass had grown over the top of their trail from each side and they continued along the path in a kind of tunnel. It was insane. We found a spot where a few of these paths met up and it was like the China of ant world. There was just a mass of bobing leaves as the ants merged into one big path and continued along their way, on some kind of super highway. It was fascinating. My dad would have been proud at the amount of time we spent being fascinated by ants today.


Giant black ants holding some kind of meeting


Crazy ants forging paths in the grass (I think they’re leaf cutter ants)

We spent the whole walk home looking for sloths but we found none. Disappointed, as we were about to round the corner to return to our dinghy I saw something fast and springy run across the path ahead of us. I assumed it was another squirrel. Then we heard something in the bushes right next to us. I looked over to see a monkey detaching himself from the bushes he had just landed in, to scramble off into the scrub. We missed him! Garth was diasappointed. I tried to see where he had gone but he disappeared like a ninja. Then I happened to glance up at the tree above us, and two tiny monkeys stared back down. They were so small I thought they must be babies, but Garth informed me that howler monkeys were just small and that our friends were juvenielles. Cheeky children. They didnt' stay above us for long, eventually leaping through the air to land on another tree and then scrambling off into the jungle.

Enchanted by these adorable creatures, I looked around to see if I could find any more while Garth tried to take photos of the babies. We were surrounded! There were little dark balls hiding in the trees all around us. We watched them for ages, enjoying their antics. They were very different to the spider monkeys on Linton island. Those were bigger, with more personality. They used their tails as an extra arm, sometimes just hanging down with their arms in the air as if they were flying. The spider monkeys were friendly and very, very cheeky.



The howler monkeys were a lot more skittish. They had beautiful long, curly tails but they didn't use them as an extra limb. Instead of swinging from tree to tree in a flurry of feet and tails like the spider monkeys, these guys just launched themselves into the air and then grabbed onto whatever they landed on. They were like little, noisy grenades flying through the air and then exploding on their target. They were awesome.

After a while we gathered our things and moved on, but we found another monkey right next to the road a little further on. He was hiding behind a huge leaf, staying perfectly still. Garth noticed him, but eventually decided that there's no way that little black ball could be a monkey. It was just a branch. I watched him for a while longer and eventually decided that it was indeed another furry grenade. When he realised his cover had been blown, the poor guy scampered up the tree and backtracked to where his friends were. We decided to go back for one more look.

When we returned to the tree we had stopped beside at the beginning, I looked up to find yet another monkey right next to us. He was hiding behind a huge leaf. But he wasn't a very good hider, because he was eating his handful of camouflage. We sat down and watched him for ages as he devoured his handful of leaves. As the remains of his dinner got smaller and smaller, I noticed something underneath all the leaves. It was a tiny, tiny head twisting around and trying to take in it's surroundings. This monkey was no boy! She had a very tiny baby in tow, clinging to her stomach as she finished her dinner. I begged Garth to take some pictures, but he refused. He was too far away for me to reach over and grab the camera, and he was having too much fun to look through a lens.


You can just see the fuzzy outline of a tiny head on the left


Munching on leaves

The mummy eventually climbed down, with a lot more care than the other monkeys were using. She jumped from one tree to another and ended up less than 1m away from me. The tiny baby was gripping tightly to her back, with two arms and two legs stretched out in different directions trying to grab as much fur as it could. The little head swivelled around to look at me as the mum jumped onto another tree and disappeared up into the canopy with the rest of her family. It was truly remarkable.

So day one and we're already really, really happy. Garth found enough monkeys to keep him satisfied for a while, I got to see a tiny, fluffy baby and we both had a great time exploring the ruins of Fort Lorenzo. Next stop, somewhere with more sloths.

Xxx Monique

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