I had the opportunity to walk around the perimeter of Taricaya the other day. It took us 3 hours to walk around 457 hectares. It was full of adventure hehe. We started at 7:30 in the morning so it wasn`t wanting to die hot. It was cool seeing different parts of the jungle. We got to see some Primary Forest at the back of Taricaya. Secondary forest is the usual Taricaya scenary in which you can hardly see of the trail. In primary forest you can see 60ft or more across the ground. Some interesting things happened on the hike. First, a wasp got caught in my hair and stung my head twice and then I tried to swipe it out, but got stung on my hand. At the same time a wasp was stinging another volunteer through her shirt and so she just took it off and we all started booking it down the trail to get away from the wasps. Second, a volunteer got a really bad sting and wanted to go back and so Rachel took her back and said she`d meet us at the spider monkey camp. We (Heather, Sally, Lucy, and I) reach the camp and are just sitting and talking when we see Dixon (a spider monkey) five trees away. Spider monkeys can be very dangerous. It was either Dixon, or the alpha male Wollie, who attacked one of the cooks face and sent another volunteer to the hospital. Dixon started getting closer and closer until me, Sally, and Heath were standing around the table with him on it. We had our machettes grasped tight. Mine was backwards so I would just club him if he attached. Lucy was smart and had started unzipping a tent and diving in it. The rest of us decided that was probably a good idea and so clumped together by it. First, Heather went and then Sally dove in. Then it was me witha backwards machette and a spider monkey 4 ft from me that started ¨ooo¨ing at me. It was terrifying. I couldn´t lift up the tent flap without turning my eyes from Dixon so I was yelling in the tent that they should lift it and then I dove in with the machette and accidently hit Lucy with the machette. It was burning hot in the tent so we tried to push the over back a little from the inside. Dixon was chilling right outside the tent. We sat there and waited for Rachel. When we heard her, we yelled and warned her of the situation. Luckily she had grabbed 3 nets from by the cage. We figured that maybe Dixon was just hungry so we threw some of the food we were to put by the cage to distract him. It worked somewhat and we clumped together with me and Sally walking backwards with nets. Sally was saying ¨We should probably stick together¨when we turned around and saw Lucy and Rachel booking it hahaha. We continued to keep our eyes on him and walk backwards until we got to the log to cross the creek. Just my luck, I slipped and fell and my leg went half way into the water. After that little adventure the rest of the walk was pretty mild. We did see a bunch of wild squirrel monkeys though.
I have learned a game down here that is called musical bumps. It certainly does give you some bumps in the form of bruises haha. It`s like musical chairs only when the music stops you have to get on the floor as quickly as possible. It`s very fun:)
The river is always a fun place to swim, but the water level is slowly rising because its the rainy season. One day Laura, Yannik, and I walked to a sandbar in the middle of the river and then floated down. Laura and I also invented an anti-caiman dance to protect ourselves from the caiman. It works because we haven´t been bitten yet;)
On what appeared to be a regular afternoon, I had another strange encounter with the spider monkeys. Zack, Hersha, and I went to the spider monkeys to put food in their feeding bucket. I was armed with a net to catch any rowdy monkeys. They started coming from the tops of the trees and when we backed off they followed. Zack had to tie the rope attached to the food bucket and while Zack was in the cage to do it Wollie, the alpha male, came and sat on the door. Me and Hersha backed off as to not upset him. When Wollie moved, Zack came out and started walkng towards us, but Wollie started going toward him so Zack stopped. Zack told us to remain calm as Wollie climbed up Zack and sat on him for 2 minutes. When Wollie got off him he came toward me and I stuck the net in front of my body in case he wanted to attack. Zack got around him though and we started slowly walkng away... keeping our eyes on him. He followed us half way back to Taricaya (about 1.5km)! The whole time I was a little nervous because only Zack had a net because we had to leavce the other 2. I grabbed a good sized stick to protect myself if needed. It was really eerie when Wollie would gt a little behind and the sprint at us. Also, how he would walk like a human sometimes. Zack and I made a video of it on his camera. He commentated and I was the camera woman. I felt like the person that always dies in scary movies hahah.
oh my gosh!!!!! I had no idea these monkeys were so terrifying!
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