Tracking monkeys

Wednesday 1 July

The (first) day I couldn’t find the monkeys...

Last night it stormed.  I had gone to bed by 8pm, and the storm woke me around 9:30pm with rain pelting the tent, sounding quite similar to popping popcorn.  Then came the flashes of light and booming thunder, and then the downpour. I knew I’d probably be fine in the tent, but the wind concerned me a bit.  Occasionally the side of the tent would flap pretty hard, and I couldn’t tell if the pink noise I was hearing was wind or waves, but it sounded loud and close.  I comforted myself with the fact that I was probably up too high for waves to reach me, even with a really high tide.  I was fairly well protected from the wind by trees, so the only legitimate concern was probably falling branches. I was able to fall back asleep for bits of the night until morning. 

When I woke up it was still raining and continued to on and off all day, but the storm was over. I saw a few juvenile monkeys running around near camp, but the adults were nowhere in sight.  I went to the hut to prepare myself for the day, hoping the group would make their way down to the beach sometime soon.  This was not so.

I only saw a solitary male on the beach, so I decided to hit the forest and try to tack them down.  After visiting all the areas I had seem them before, I expanded my search a bit further around the island. Still no luck.

I got a bit closer in the afternoon:

1:45 – I heard monkeys

2:35 – I saw another solitary male, I think the same one from the beach that morning.

3:05 – I found a different, less habituated, solitary male, who displayed and threatened me.

There is also the possibility that a lot more monkeys saw me than I was able to spot…

I kept imaging how exciting and rewarding it would be when I finally stumbled upon the monkeys I was looking for, but in the end, I never found the main group.  However, I had one heck of a hike!  I got to see more of the island, and got to continue conditioning myself to scale up and down the ridges and valleys.  

Going in circles looking for monkeys.

I’m pretty much habituated to being rained on, and being constantly being wet.  And, because of all the rain, there was a pretty decent freshwater stream I got to shower in this evening, so I’m actually feeling quite clean!  So, I’m feeling pretty optimistic.

Tonight I’m sleeping in the hut, since it is supposed to rain again all night.