The Monkeys Send Their Love.

Today I went on a peccary hunt. No joke. It was fantastic. After one of the guides heard a call across the river, a group of us piled into the canoe: Two guides (Jose and Mayer), Tomas (a local kitchen worker), Bess (another volunteer) and myself. We disembarked just downriver on the opposite bank, crossing into Yasuni National Park as we commenced our grand search for the white-collared peccary. We clambered up the bank and into the jungle to be greeted by a pissed-off spider monkey, jumping up and down on its chosen vine and hooting at us as it told us in no uncertain terms that we were unwelcome impostors. We continued on through the dense (and often spiky) vegetation, following Mayer and Tomas (who, it appears, has a bit more to himself than the come-ons he aims at me as I help prepare meals and clear dishes) as they tracked the peccaries, breaking branches along the way to mark our return path. Twenty minutes of fruitless searching culminated with the spotting of a couple trumpeters and a consensus that we had traveled too far downstream. After returning to the boat and tying up across from the station to make a second attempt, we slipped, fell, tripped, crunched, and stealthily slid our way around massive trees, over vines, up and down stream beds, through the water, and along peccary trails as Mayer and Tomas argued over our wisest route to interception. We passed vast sections of earth uprooted by the ungulates and huge masses of tapir scat piled under bushes... and then we heard a snorting scream go up in the near distance. We stalked closer, over a hill look over a stream bed. We heard more cries. The clack of tusks reached us over the rustle of vegetation as trees moved on the opposing bank. We slid down the muddy bank, clinging to vines and roots, and squelched through the water. The opposite bank was steep: we pulled each other up as the mud gave way beneath us. When we reached the top of the embankment, we found them: perhaps 30 peccaries, babies and all, snorting, clacking and grunting as they tore up the ground in their search for food. They ran. It was a living mass moving through the shrubbery, screams and clacking and babies' squeals converging into a giant cacophony. We followed. We sprinted through the jungle through the overwhelming stench, dodging spiny trunks and vines, humidity making sweat pour down our backs. After two minutes or so a lone baby remained, squealing as it ran through the underbrush to disappear behind a tree. Tomas gave chase, falling on top of it and capturing it against his chest before it slid through his arms and out of sight. Upon reconvening, we discovered a dilemma: no one knew which direction we had come from. In our frenzied running, we had forgotten to break branches. Jose, Mayer, and Tomas squabbled. After a few minutes the generator turned on in the distance, the sun decided to grace us with an appearance and we headed north toward the river and back to the canoe.

Peccaries aside, it's been a pretty fantastic week. There are four guides working at the station. Jose is my favorite: he's the first person I met when I arrived in January. I had picked up a giant fanned leaf from the ground and was examining it as he watched, at which point he said to me in his soft-spoken manner, “Bella hoja (Pretty leaf).” Which I managed to misinterpret as “Bella ojo (Pretty eye).” At which point I thought, What the hell, you're hitting on me? And then I figured out what he had said, and then he proceeded to tell me the story of the leaf and the history of the tree it came from. Jose is one of my three English students: he always comes with questions, which I can usually form an entire lesson out of. And for some reason he thinks I'm the shit: he takes me and Bess out on night walks every night and gets up to visit the tower for sunrise when we're able to skip out on the beginning of breakfast. And he takes us for hikes (with the excuse of going into the jungle with us to learn English vocabulary), bedazzling us with his vast knowledge. Ramiro is really, really good at spotting things, especially from the river. He gets crazy excited over pretty much anything and is also a fair bit of a jokster. Santiago is another of my English students; also quieter but full of knowledge. And then we have Mayer: a walking encyclopedia on jungle plants and medicinal uses. After 30 years as a jungle guide, he's also a fair bit of a master tracker.

We've been doing some other work as well as marking trails and teaching English: Saturday morning was spent with a computer, inputing data from previous years' turtle nests. Sunday we inventoried the entire contents of the kitchen, including produce, meat, pantry, and cleaning supplies. In Spanish. Tuesday morning we sorted through the station's immense first aid kit, disposing of perhaps 90% of the medications (expired) and reorganizing. Wednesday I went through the year's camera trap photos, labeling each with date, location, and time, coming across images of short-eared dogs, ocelots, armadillos, jaguars, tapirs, peccaries, and more.

Thursday morning we put up trail markers on one of the outer trails called Harpia and took Jose with us. We found two groups of chorongos (wooly monkeys), a red brocket deer (with tiny antlers), a red amazon squirrel (which, yes, is bright red and giant), a cuckoo, inch worms, assassin bugs (which, despite their eerie beauty, suck your blood when given the chance) and several nun birds. A large group of blue-and-yellow macaws flew overhead. Jose found a forest fruit that appeared remarkably similar to a star fruit until opened, and tasted like tangy cantaloupe. Having a guide to myself is amazing.

In terms of fun: It's the rainy season. Last Friday we looked up to see a blanket of flat, dark gray, and decided the canopy tower was the perfect way to spend an afternoon. We arrived moments after the downpour. It was like looking out through multiplying layers of fine gauze: trees simply disappeared, blending into a solid gray mass perhaps ½ kilometer out; usually we can see for miles.

A river float, although calm, turned up a king vulture, spider monkeys, capuchin monkeys, squirrel monkeys, and a boat-billed heron. During a night float we found caimans, a heron, a paca, bats, and night jars.

The ceiba tree is fruiting and the minuscule white orchids that cling to its branches have opened. We've seen gilded barbets, arasaris, green honeycreepers, euphonias, and a black-headed parrot. There are tanagers everywhere in the top of the tower, the most memorable being a green-and-gold tanager who flew into the bromeliads above us, splashing as it bathed itself, vibrant green and yellow feathers contrasting against the gray-green and maroon zebra-striped vegetation. A group of wooly monkeys passed through the canopy of the trees surrounding us, raising a racket in the leaves as they  jumped and swung between branches, babies on their backs, as close as 15 m. And: a poison dart frog, climbing its way up a vertical limb toward the bromeliads approximately 155 feet in the air, shiny black with brilliant yellow stripes and bright blue legs.

In the morning, while the canopy is still shrouded in mist and the moon hangs low, the Ceiba tree comes alive. As the first light arrives arasaris swarm into the tree, flapping noisily between the branches as they snatch up the bright red fruit. Then the tanagers come, flitting among the twigs as they daintily work their way through individual fruits. Honeycreepers pick their way among the flowers along with euphonias, and barbets join into the party.

A nighttime visit to the canopy walkway revealed a sleeping purple honeycreeper and bizarre praying mantises. Night walks have turned up lizards clinging to tree trunks and leaves, perfectly camouflaged in the moss behind the bromeliads, along with a fairly aggressive venomous centipede who jumped off the tree at my face when I poked it with a stick. Also: poison dart frogs, praying mantises, giant tree frogs, mating grasshoppers, scorpions, and an assortment of casi-deadly spiders (some shedding skins), not including the most awesome arachnid I have ever seen, its tiny black-and-yellow-striped body adorned with a rim of bright red spikes and two ginormous elongated curved bright blue spines. And hooting night monkeys, silhouetted perfectly by the moon as it shown brightly down directly behind them, as the crossed my path between the leafy branches of the trees on either side. It is entirely peaceful when all lights are turned out and moonlight finds its way down through the trees onto tiny patches among the leaves, literally glowing within the pitch black vegetation.