A few more mangos

It turns out that mango season wasn’t completely over; on Thursday night there was a big crate of mangos in the kitchen, so I had plenty to take out to the forest on Friday. As far as mangos are concerned, I’ll just take it a day at a time from now on.

My week out with the monkeys was interesting. I’d pretty much given up hope of finding a North Group juvenile for the second half of this month, but then on Thursday morning, there was young Horace, low along the North forest patch. As I was walking up the path, I heard a little sneeze (the monkeys actually sneeze a lot), and I thought to myself, “That sounds like Horace.” After 11 months of watching them, I guess have now even developed the ability to distinguish the sound of their sneezes, because sure enough, it was Horace. Bless his little heart. I know it is not on purpose or anything, but on numerous occasions when the monkeys are making a big move (such as to the far away mango patch), I swear that Horace waits for me in some place obvious so that I find him and follow the group to their new location. That’s what he did on Thursday; they didn’t really move all that far, but it was in a place that they have only used once or twice before and there are no paths back there, so I wouldn’t have found them if I was just looking on my own. It was very sweet to watch Horace all day because he stayed close to his mom, Matilda, and to his new baby sibling (who it turns out is probably a girl), Toby. I’m hoping that Horace, Matilda, and Toby turn out to be the key to understanding some of these pre-adult mortality issues. If my calculations are correct, there has been a 67% infant/juvenile mortality rate in the North Group these past 11 months. Horace has got to be around 2 years old, so he’s made it past 2 of the critical stages when I’ve noticed others dying off (6-7 months, when they are no longer allowed to travel on their mom’s back, and around 12 months when mom refuses to nurse them any longer). I’m wondering if Matilda is doing something right, because Horace survived and now she’s got Toby. What I find so fascinating is that even though Horace was starting to get pretty independent, after Toby was born, he returned to Matilda and now spends most of his time sitting by her side. I suspect that Horace’s presence might be beneficial to Toby: all other members of the group are infinitely fascinated with newborns and they are constantly trying to touch or smell or even grab the baby and run away. This can get kind of rough at times, so a new mom definitely has her work cut out for her, trying to keep the others away from the baby. This is a bit of a conjecture, but it seems to me that Horace might be “helping” his mom out in this respect by offering additional protection to Toby during these early crucial months. Unfortunately, I won’t be here too much longer to see if Toby makes it, so we’ll have to see if I can actually make these claims from the data I’ve got.

Horace

Horace eating Acacia

At any rate, I was glad when the week was finally over and I could finally get some respite from the hundreds of thousands of spiders and millions of billions of mosquitoes—not to mention the sometimes torrential downpours—out in the forest. On Saturday Rob and I decided to bike to Altagracia (17 km away) to go to the Museo Ometepe. Rob bikes to Altagracia all the time, but this is the first time I’ve ridden there. The distance doesn’t faze me so much, its just the treachery of the road I don’t like. Even though the road has been “fixed” somewhat, there are still places where your life flashes before your eyes. All in all, the ride over and back turned out to be pretty great, except for the times that I thought I was going to die (which was really only 2 or 3 times). The museum itself was not all that impressive, but again, the trip over there was more about the journey than the destination. There were a few interesting maps to look at, a couple of murals, some stuffed animals (as in taxidermy, not the cute kind), and some undated potsherds from some point in Ometepe’s archaeological past. While in Altagracia (a fairly bustling metropolis compared to our place on the more sparsely populated Maderas side), Rob and I went into a little store and found a few supplies. Rob bought a treasured can of Pringles (we hardly ever eat this kind of stuff in the US, but somehow, “American” junk food is too hard to pass up here), and I found a small tube of tooth-whitening toothpaste. I am pretty low-maintenance as far as beauty products and toiletries are concerned, but I am partial to tooth-whitening toothpaste. I do think the stuff really works. Plus, my teeth are probably my best and perhaps only redeeming physical feature so I like to play them up as much as I can. Seriously, one time there was a retired couple staying here at the hacienda and they told me that my teeth were so white and straight that they wondered if my father was a dentist. I resisted the temptation to ask why they assumed that it would be my father, rather than my mother, who was a dentist and just explained that it was good dental hygiene. Well, I unfortunately mis-judged how much toothpaste I would need to finish out this project, and I ran out of tooth-whitening toothpaste a couple weeks ago. My ship came in yesterday when I found that the store in Altagracia had some. Although it was exorbitantly expensive, I bought it and rode all 17 km home with it in my pocket.

Rob in the bustling metropolis of Altagracia

Melissa will be keeping those pearly whites pearly and white

Some of the more impressive artifacts at the museum

When we were about 5 km from home and in the middle of nowhere, Rob’s front tire went flat. It seemed like we were going to have to walk the bikes the rest of the way back, but we ended up finding a little house and asking a guy who lived there if he could help. While about 6 or 7 children stood around looking wide-eyed at us and pawing us, the guy went and found an air pump to fill up Rob’s tire. It was a temporary fix, because the puncture was not sealed, but it was enough to get Rob about another 4 km and by that point we were just about home.

Rob walking the bike; note the container of Pringles in the back pocket of his jersey

That had prolonged our trip enough to the point we were starving, so we treated ourselves to a really late lunch of ‘vegetarian tacos” at a place down the road. Now I’ve got to spend the rest of the weekend resting so that I have enough energy to get through the rest of this month.

This was a long one—thanks for reading!