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Today, we had big plans. Well, no, we really didn’t. But we discussed a lot of things we COULD do. In reality, we did little, and still had an AWESOME day! I started with an early morning walk to see the howler monkeys. They were on our ‘to do’ list today. I heard they were treed around another house not more than a two minute walk. Well, that turned out to be true, but, I didn’t have my zoom lens, and they were pretty far from where I could comfortably walk to, so I decided we’d go back as a family later in the morning. I came home to make breakfast, and that is when the coati was in our tree outside our house. He was very cute, and Audrey even bound out of bed to see him!! We got several good shots, but my camera was a little foggy because of the thick condensation in the air, so the pictures are ‘okay’— Still, we were very excited to check another animal off our list. Coati’s are related to raccoons and are called ‘hog nosed raccoons’ because their snoot can actually rotate sixty degrees! They have ankle joints like raccoons, which allows them to climb down trees head first. The howler monkeys were about the last thing we were pretty sure we could see. We’ve about given up on the cats around here, since they are illusive, out late at night, and usually are hunting you if you see them. Plus, we learned that there are really only about 50 panthers left in this region, so, our chances of spotting one was slim, even though we heard a local told of one around his house one night— After breakfast the kids were dying to go to the beach. So, they set out, while I picked up the house since the cleaning lady was coming by. All of a sudden a chorus of cries of delight and terror rang out from the beach… The howler monkeys had come to our beach, and were right in front of our house!! Malena high tailed it to the ocean, and Audrey called and called me. Naturally, I went running with camera, and we spent the next three hours photographing and watching the howlers through the binoculars. They were very interesting, because, it seemed like they are not eating the leaves from the tree, but the twigs the leaf stems come out of? Not sure, but they kept picking the leave and throwing them to the ground. They did eat something from the tree, and we could see they had what looked like a powerful set of very sharp teeth, but, they seemed to only be interested in the leaves or sticks from the trees. Very interesting. We liked watching this band of monkeys because it was a complete family. We even saw two mothers with babies. One was still hanging on, and the other was young, but not ‘attached’ to its mother. Their faces looked a lot like gorilla faces. And with that, we have seen the four types of monkeys for this region. We saw the howlers in the wild, the squirrel monkeys at the restaurant where we paid a lot for spaghetti, and the spider monkey and the white faced monkeys at the wildlife sanctuary. Each monkey occupies a different section of the rainforest layer, so they are all critical to the continuation of this region. The ladies were cleaning our house, but after we watched the monkeys and the kids swam it was time to head in for lunch. The cleaning ladies daughter, Tatiana, came and played Nintendo DS with the kids after lunch and a couple of games of UNO. She doesn’t speak English, so it was interesting to watch the kids play together. We spent a large part of the early afternoon reading and hanging out on the porch, then around 2:30 we went back to the beach. The kids built some killer sand nations on the beach and we sat and explored and built as we watched a huge thunderstorm coming our way. It was quite beautiful to see it coming our way. As darkness fell, either from the rain storm or the night coming upon us, I came in and put together some burgers for dinner. Now, after dinner, all the kids and Matt are playing UNO again and I am watching the heat lightning over the ocean as the rain falls down. There is one mystery to be solved. Every night, all night, all around in our roof we hear a sort of chirping call. We figure it is either a bat, a lizard or a frog, but we have no idea what it is. So, we hope to solve that mystery before we leave. Seeing the coati and the howlers today has rounded out our wildlife sightings very nicely. Tomorrow morning we get up early to walk around the rainforest with a biologist, eat termites, and climb a giant fichus tree and repel down. Right now, I am on my porch, and for some reason I can hear strumming and some type of bongo-ee sounding drum— hmmmmmm… 7:10, almost time for Cade to come out and beg to go to bed… I love the rainforest. |
