Cheeky Monkeys

After straining my ligaments in my ankle I was despatched the monkey park for a little bit of monkeying around. There are 3 types of monkeys here at Parque Marchia. 1) Capuchins 2) Spider monkeys 3) Squirrel Monkeys

Capuchins: These guys are thieves and not to be trusted with anything. In the 2 days I was there the little buggers, stole 2 bottles of coke, 1 pair of reading glasses, 2 pairs of sunglasses, a sandwich, a digital camera, a packet of alka seltzer tablets that were swiftly gobbled up and the latest John Grisham. They are not afraid to give you a little nip shoud you decide to eat too many of their peanuts and they were also responsible for ripping off half a guys ear (see previous blogs). There have been a total of 250 of these monkeys released into the park in the last 8 years, most of them end up going off in their own groups, free again to live happy lives, others remain petty thieves and are the bane of our experience.

Spider monkeys: These lovely little critters are my favorite animal of the park and have also provided me with my new girlfriend Tomasita. Tomasita is the matriarch of the spider monkeys and she hates girls... she usually bites them and loves men (I guess that makes her a boy girl). These monkeys only have 4 fingers, but 5 toes and although they are not as bad at thieving as the capuchins, one of them did manage to steal my Paul Auster novel, climb a tree and begin ripping out random pages and then eating them.
In the end I lost 60 pages so I guess I just make up my own story now. But back to my new true love Tomasita, every day now when I walk Leoncio the Puma, she comes down and lies all over me for a least an hour. She grabs my hand and makes me groom her and we go on walks togethor to find spiders. It´s true romance.

Squirrel monkeys: (the monkey on the left, not in the middle)These guys are tiny little things, they are wild and just come down to steal food during feeding. Cute little fellas though. It was great to have a couple of rest days after walking the Alpha male puma and basically my job entailed cuddling monkeys and feeding them fruit and making sure tourists didn´t get their cameras stolen.

I even got to spend an afternoon in the monkey mirador which is basically the psychological ward for monkeys. this is where all monkeys unfit for public consumption end up, the thief´s thief, the wanking monkeys and the ones who like to rip ears off.... actually it was quite pleasent up there, felt I´d finally found somewhere I fit in... crazy monkey I am