Monkey Business

---

Originally 5th December 2010

It was a snap decision. Sipping a big bottle of Fanta on the corner of a quiet street in Santa Cruz, I suddenly announced my plans to volunteer for two weeks in the jungle with rescued animals. “With or without you!” I declared to the others, but Jeff and Box were in too. We’d come to Santa Cruz with the intention of doing a jungle trek, but you know what? I don’t really like trekking. I had only finished the Inca Trail a week ago. It had taken 15 hours on a bus to get here, and man, was it hot. It lies only 400m above sea-level and we were coming from such altitude that my ears popped on the way.

A couple of guys played guitar in the restaurant we ate in that night, helping me relax. I was bricking it now that we’d decided to go ahead and volunteer. Appropriately they played ‘Wish You Were Here’.

It wasn’t easy finding tickets to our chosen parque. We’d decided on Ambue Ari, 348km north of Santa Cruz city, where there is no telephone or electricity, and water has to be taken from a borehole. We walked back and forth through the bus station, asking around, but it seemed people were more concerned with selling us tickets than actually helping us. Eventually, we spotted a sign for ‘Asc-Guanayos’ that led us to a row of bus bays and ticket vendors outside the main station. We were set.

We moved on to a huge, sprawling street market to buy some work clothes. Thankfully it had cooled down since yesterday and the air wasn’t anywhere near as thick. We managed to get hold of some cut-price trousers, white t-shirts, and I found a wedding dress that doubled as a mosquito net. It took a while to find; I had already had one made but my measurements were woefully off and I was left with something not much bigger than a head net.

But while waiting for the bus the next morning, we thought that perhaps we’d be better off going to Parque Machia instead of Ambue Ari. I had been in touch with the volunteers and they had said that Machia, in Chapare province in the department of Cochabamba, might be better for us even though Ambue Ari was closer. They were more in need of volunteers and we had only fifteen days to spare. Ambue Ari is mainly a cat park, and to work with the big cats you need 30 days.

We quickly debated what to do. It was decided. Leaving Box with the bags, Jeff and I hurried off to sort some more tickets out. I know for sure now that it was the right decision. While waiting for our new bus the button popped off my new high-quality trousers. Great.

The bus was a proper South American bus, just like outta the movies. I was sat on my own, next to a giant old senora. She took up half my seat as well as hers and blocked the aisle with her luggage which she refused to move for anybody. Even I had to scramble over her and her things with my trousers falling down at our stop in Villa Tunari.

We were met at the Parque by Ani, a 19 year-old German girl hoping to study in Argentina, and given a quick tour. We weren’t the only new faces; three Israelis had also arrived that day. After the tour we nervously waited for our induction, sometimes talking to the other volunteers outside the cafe on their breaks.

The Israelis weren’t sure. They wanted cats but there weren’t any available, nor were they prepared to stay 30 days. If they stayed there’d only be two places with monkeys and one with birds between the three of us. To decide on who’d have birds we played faithful old rock, paper, scissors. I lost.

Keith, the messy dreadlocked guy that had given us our induction, felt they were going to leave. I had the feeling that he wanted them to go; if they were debating it then their hearts weren’t in it. Keith kinda had this detachedness about him with new volunteers. I guess he had seen so many people arrive only to leave after a day or two. Somebody must have been smiling down on me because the next morning the Israelis did go, headed for Ambue Ari instead. Yes!

I was responsible for the 27 Capuchin monkeys in the clinic (and one Albifron). The vets worked right next to me and spent more time treating the volunteers than they did the animals. There were just the two of us in the clinic, during my first week Rebecca, and in my second, Catherine. We had to feed the monkeys and prepare their food, clean up after them three times a day, and play with them. We also made them toys, filling bottles with seeds or wrapping food in banana leaves to create little parcels, which would keep them entertained for five minutes if we were lucky. There was just the one that I couldn’t handle, one of the Alpha males called ‘Monkey’. This monkey was a hard man. He used to hoard the corn given to him as a snack and use it to lure ill-fated chickens towards him! During the day, some of the monkeys were let out of their cages then put back in at the end of it.

Apparently, Capuchins have the intelligence of a six year-old child. They use tools and can work things out, like how to undo the karabiners that were holding them on their ropes. Monkey would release Isa’s all the time. I was terrified he’d work out how to unscrew his own because he wanted to kill me. I had a strap on my trousers with a popper button which another monkey was fascinated by. He could unfasten it, but couldn’t quite pop it back in. He’d take a baffled look at it, start banging them together, take another look. He’d never get bored though, he was so keen to work it out.

Their social dynamics are amazing. Each of the groups has its own Alpha male. One group would come down from the forest and tease the former Alpha in his cage at night. They’d kill him if he was loose because he’d lost his status in a fight. They say he is caged for his own protection, but after seeing his record, I think it was just as much for ours...

Some of them were separated because of feuds. There were two Alphas in the clinic that were kept at opposite ends. I love the little beeping noises they make like R2D2. The blokes seemed to enjoy sitting opposite one another and just having a fondle.

I bought the right to name one of the babies in the clinic at the Jungle Party, where three names were auctioned off. Little ‘Homer’ cost me 30 quid. His sister went for £50, only to be called ‘Apple’... The third went to Jeff who wanted to call him ‘Dr Jones’ (as in Indiana) until everyone convinced him ‘Indy’ was better. A fourth baby went up for auction on the ‘net where they reckoned on raising $200-300 for him. Catherine had already christened him ‘Lennon’. I had a thought; imagine as soon as we left they re-sold the names at another auction and Homer is no longer Homer...

At the end of our first week Box and I decided to represent Machia in the Machia vs. Town ‘el classico’ football match. Grover, Rusber, Luke, Brad, Pol, Sean, and Aff were all playing. Aff should have stayed at home. I should have too. Literally seconds after kicking off I was pushed over the flat ball, hitting the floor like a sack of potatoes. I had sprained my ankle and had to come off right away. I felt sick from the adrenaline rush. At least the girls were sympathetic. I just wish I hadn’t been banging on about showing off before. And did I need a day off? Not a chance!

Our accommodation was basic. Ironically, it was called ‘Valle Grande’. Grand it wasn’t. (I know, I know, grande is ‘large’ in Spanish...) It was about 100 yards from the cafe, the hub of all activity, and is reserved for volunteers. When we first arrived, there weren’t many there, but it soon filled up. We were locked out the room our first night because the others sharing with us were out. We waited, and waited. Resigned to the fact that we had to be up at dawn and needed sleep, we moved into an empty twin room. I had one bed to myself. Box and Jeff shared the other. A hot, sweaty night ensued...

A lot of the time we didn’t have enough water pressure to shower, or even water. A lot of ‘cowboy showering’ went on under the tap. The evenings were sweltering and a cold shower (when available) would definitely have an aesthetic quality. My bed was next to Danya’s, lucky because as well as providing the illusion that I was sleeping ‘next’ to a beautiful woman, the gentle breeze of her fan would soothe me to sleep every night as everybody else drowned in their own sweat.

We had a really good group of people in the house: Danya, Brad, Gaz, Kylie, Aff, Carla, Sam, Ash, Brad, Sabrina and Verena. Most evenings we cooked for eachother, and a kind of rota developed between us, Aff and Carla and Kylie and Gaz.

We shared the house with some massive insects. Brad didn’t think so but he’s Australian. I caught cockroaches scampering over my mattress and Jeff experienced the true horror of being under the covers with one. I took to sleeping with a steel rake next to the bed and I’d rake the covers before getting in.

The antihistamine cream that I applied generously to my sandfly and mosquito bites just about made life bearable.

For our first day of work, we all wore the same white t-shirts we had bought at the market in Santa Cruz, and were thereafter known as ‘The White T-shirt Gang’. I can only imagine what we must have looked like walking down the road that morning, glaring in the sun. The night of our last day of work, a ‘White Sensation’ party was thrown in our honour where the dress code was, well, white. It was amazing, everybody came.

It was difficult tearing myself away in the end. It’s its own little community and you become close friends with the other people there. The conditions are basic but that doesn’t matter, you’re having too good a time to care. We spent one evening telling the most offensive jokes ever conceived.

We hung around an extra day for Thanksgiving dinner prepared by the volunteers, and so that we could leave with Aff, Carla, Adam and Shannon the following morning.

We had attempted to walk the tourist trail earlier in the afternoon. My injured ankle made it difficult to walk the steep rough trails snaking their way through the park, the jungle greeting us with whistles and hums. But it was the heat that defeated us. We did see Balu the bear though.

Leaving Villa Tunari proved more difficult than anticipated. The seven of us crossed the long bridge over the river and made our way to the bus station, which was really more of a bus stop. It was midday and killer, one of the hottest days we had had there, and we stopped in the market for one last milkshake. We had hoped to fill a micro to Cochabamba, but after queuing for tickets for hours, nobody would take us because of our big bags. We decided to split up. Carla queued for more tickets. Just as she reached the front of the line, Aff announced that he had arranged a taxi instead. We waited almost an hour, no sign of anything. Then, a bus heaved to a stop at the end of the street with three available seats. The guys told us ‘GO!’ It was 4.30 and had taken four hours.

And we were gone.

---