Rainy season, interrupted

Number of Ticks Removed: 28
Days Tick Free: 0
Tick season wasn’t over, it was just on a break. And now it has resumed with a different kind of tick.

Today, among other things, is my sister and her husband’s wedding anniversary. Its hard to believe that a whole year has passed since we all stood on the beach for the ceremony; so many things have happened in a year.

I thought that for sure the wet season had begun in earnest because all night long I heard rain pouring down. When the alarm clock went off at 4:25 in the morning, I almost just rolled over and went back to sleep. But then I thought, I might as well try it. And its a good thing I did, because as it turns out, it wasn’t actually raining at all. I guess the irrigation system was malfunctioning or something, because all night water had been shooting out of one of the pipes in the banana patch beside our room. It just sounded like rain, but outside of the banana patch, the ground was bone dry.

I went to the forest by way of what I call the “Secret Camino”—its a steeper path on the north side of the forest, and it isn’t really a secret, I just happened to discover it by accident one day in September or October when the monkeys were over that way. Since the North Group has been hanging out in that area again, the Secret Camino is a much more direct route to get there. Its a beautiful path, really, but its so steep that while I am climbing it, I sometimes slip and slide back down little ways, and when I am descending it, I almost surely end up traveling on my rear end for a bit. But its so beautiful. This morning while I was climbing I paused briefly to look down below and admire the view the lake, the purplish pre-dawn sky, and the bright full moon. It doesn’t get much better than this.

The monkeys were exactly where I’d left them the night before, still fast asleep when I got to them just about 20 after 5. They slept and slept. The sun rose, and still they slept. The birds sang boisterously and the day became hot and bright, and still the monkeys slept. I kept thinking, I wish they had told me that they planned on sleeping in today, because I could have slept in myself and still made it to the forest before they got up. Finally about 7:30 they began moving a little bit and started having their breakfast of Bersara flower buds. They were done with that by 8:00, and they proceeded to sleep again for the rest of the day. My focal animal only roused momentarily for a brief love affair around 2:00pm, but she didn’t move or eat anything else until 4:00 this afternoon. It was a lazy, lazy day. I guess the monkeys must have been all tired out after their two big travel days in a row, up in the northernmost corridor with the precious mangos.

I’d taken along my rain jacket, just in case the rainy season did decide to begin for real, but it was just another dry, hot day. Tomorrow I have supposedly arranged to have Rodolfo (yes the Rodolfo) come out to the forest with me to help me with ecological sampling (tree identification and whatnot). Now, he might have a bit of a checkered past, but he does know the trees very, very well. And at the very least, if he doesn’t show up, I managed to get a sample of some Albizia leaves the monkeys ate late in the day, so I could always just stay in and use the toughness tester instead.

Thanks for reading.