Rodolfo saves the day (almost)....

I went back to the same forest today and walked around but found no monkeys. I kept hearing monkey sounds but it was so far away, a long way up the volcano. I went back out to the road and just as I got there, Rodolfo (yes the Rudolfo) happened to be riding past on his bike. He remembered me and asked how Pablito and his daughters were. I told him that Pablo had recently gotten married and he was very surprised! He talked to me for a very long time about many things, and I told him about my difficulty finding monkeys and the lack of trails in that forest patch. He said he had to be in Tichana (a few towns over) at 1pm, but he could help me for a couple of hours. We went in and he hacked away the underbrush with my machete. Even with just a little time, it is already a lot more manageable. We talked of many things. I am still amazed at how “survival mode” makes my Spanish speaking skills improve so drastically. For the life of me, I cannot utter a Spanish sentence to Frida or Martin, but here I am just chatting away with Rodolfo. He knows a lot about the forest. He said this little patch goes up the volcano about 2km and he thinks there are about 2 groups of monkeys in there. But neither of us saw or heard anything. We saw a local farmer pass through and I asked him if there were monkeys here. He said, yes, he had seen the monkeys earlier in the morning. I asked him if there are always monkeys here and he said yes. But still we did not find them.

What we did see was a lot of spiders. I pointed to the amazing red, black, and yellow ones with the huge webs and asked him if they were dangerous. He assured me they were harmless. I asked him about the infamous “pico caballo”—Nicaraguan tarantulas fabled to be able to kill a horse with their bite. He did in fact affirm that there are such tarantulas on the island, but he said they are quite rare. He said more frequently you will see the smaller brown tarantulas (like the one that lived in my bathroom last time I was here). I am pretty sure he also said that a person would not die of a pico caballo bite. Just as we were talking about this, I looked down and saw a palm sized, extraordinarily hairy spider. I shrieked. “Es un pico caballo??” Rodolfo looked at the spider and laughed, telling me it was harmless. It was spinning an egg sac or something, and he picked it up and dangled it like a yo-yo. I shrieked all the more. He set the spider down and finished it off with the machete. Guess I won’t have to worry about that one anymore.

I am very happy to have some trails in the forest, but more than slightly disconcerted that we saw no monkeys. Rodolfo discussed with me my options. He said first of all, we might not be finding the monkeys simply because we aren’t used to their ranging patterns and it was the middle of the day (the time when the sleep, so it is difficult to find them). He pointed out that he knows there to be only 2 groups of monkeys in this patch, whereas there many more groups in the forests by San Ramon. He told me that if I wanted, Rob and I could come live with him and his family (for free) in San Ramon and be only 10 minutes away from the monkeys I have studied before. He asked us what kinds of things we like to eat, so they would know what to fix us. I have to admit, that is beginning to sound appealing. Its what Pablo would do in this situation. I’m going to meet with Rodolfo tomorrow morning and look for the monkeys in Machete Forest again. I am hoping we find them, but if not I guess we have options. I feel bad for his wife though—he didn’t run this living arrangement by her before suggesting it to me!