We have returned from our third trip to the forest, with I am glad to say less bruises and scrapes than usual. Esme did fantastically for her first trip (considering the rest of us are a few weeks ahead of her) and her clothes are now as muddy as the rest of ours.
The census is going well for Nicola, she encountered a group of night monkeys on the B3 trail :) unfortunately I have not been as lucky, but I am still hopeful for the next trip.
(from left to right: Thiago, Asli, Nicola, Andrew, Josie and Sophia)
On our the final day before returning to La Esperanza, Asli, Andrew and myself decided that we would try to find some yellow-tailed woolly monkeys, as we heard them near one of the trails the previous evening. We were not too far away from the campsite when we heard the monkeys, we were immediately off the trail, scrambling uphill through the forest until finally we caught up with a group of around 10 monkeys. We followed them for 5 hours, Andrew was busy taking photographs while I was frantically taking notes on the behaviours Asli and I observed.
The group eventually stopped at a large fig tree, which made data collection a little easier, we saw very positive behaviours such as playing and allogrooming (when 2 or more monkeys are grooming each other), however there were a couple of aggressive interactions. It was truly an amazing experience and I hope that we will be lucky enough to have more encounters such as this...thousands of photos and 14 pages of notes later and we were finished for the day.
The return journey to La Esperanza seemed to be tougher than usual for the group, but we still managed to keep our spirits up and have a few fun group photos taken along the way (see below). But we are all looking forward to having a little break from our extreme hiking.
(from left to right: Nicola, Asli, Armando, Ronal, Sophia and Esme)
Tomorrow sadly we say goodbye to our friend and honorary Peru Girl Andrew Walmsley (the AMAZING photographer), he will be greatly missed by us all and while he travels back to Tarapoto to fly back to the UK, the rest of us will be heading to Chachapoyas. The Peruvian elections are coming up and so we thought we would take the opportunity to have a few days of sightseeing.
(Above: Andrew Walmsley)
Catch you in a few days time with a more touristy blog entry.
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