Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Monkey Business!


When we first arrived at our hostel in Santa Elena near the cloud forests, the guy showing us around mentioned that monkeys hang out in the trees by the hostel. As we were settling in, we heard some pitter pattering on the roof and I turned to Tim and said "Is that a monkey on the roof?" We went outside to check it out and sure enough...

The owners feed them wheat bread and fruit when they come, so visits are almost a daily occurrence.

After a while, we began to see some differences in the appearance and demeanor of each monkey. We thought the monkey below was the wise elder statesman of the group because he looked like he had a shaggy white beard.
The hostel owner sets out a plate of food but also personally hands it to some of them.


They can be a bit greedy sometimes, cramming their mouths and hands with as much as they can carry!

Here is the baby. We were told it was about 6 months old. Cute!

Make no mistake, they are still wild animals. Compare it to feeding the squirrels back home.

They really liked the watermelon.



Sometimes they would come close to us but bear their teeth as a way of letting us know who is boss. It was kind of scary sometimes!

But they are generally thoughtful creatures...


How cute is the baby?!?


The monkeys tended to scare the three parrots that also resided at the hostel. They would begin to squack and flap their wings when the monkeys arrived. The parrots were great company when the monkeys weren't around. One of them, Loli, could perfectly imitate a chicken and constantly said "Hola." The hostel owner is definitely an animal lover and doted on these birds. They slept in cages at night but were placed outside in a tree during the day. He sprayed them with water to give them baths, fed them fresh fruit and gave one of them daily flying lessons.


There was so much nature around the hostel, that we weren't even surprised to see a little bit in our room as well. We had swans in our bed!

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