"Adventure!"
by - Yoshihide, Tokyo, Japan
The Rainforest Habitat Blog
The First Encounter
July 13, 2008
Today was the day of the Primate Habitat Restoration Project tree planting, where volunteers from the village planted a total of 1,500 fruit trees around the entrance to the cave. Hopefully, these trees will eventually provide a food source and create a suitable habitat for these monkeys. The trees planted included bananas, tamarin, ficus and ipil ipil. By 10:00am, most of the villagers had arrived, carrying hoes and banana trees on their shoulders, ready to start the gruelling climb up the stairs. Fortunately, I’m the photographer today, which means the amount of stair climbing done is kept to a minimum. 
It was good to see people working together for an environmentally beneficial cause though.
A group of us later trekked up the mountain, led by Jeff Freisen, in search of the monkeys (so much for avoiding any climbing). Apparently, rock climbers in the area often see monkeys on that side of the mountain. Unfortunately, we didn’t find them, but it was good to know another area frequented by them.
The chao ban had told us that there was a woman (Yai) living just down the road from the wat who often left out water for the monkeys, so after the trek, we decided to visit her and ask her some questions about them. This is where we got lucky, as we completely missed the turning to Yai’s house, but whilst doing a U-turn, came face to face with a tree full of pinkish-brown faces. The monkeys didn’t seem to mind us watching them, and continued to eat small orange fruit from a tree, (to be identified). They were a lot smaller than I had imagined, but were very beautiful. There were some females with tiny babies clinging to their stomachs. They would probably have fitted easily into the palm of my hand!
I eventually decided to climb out of the car and take a few photos, but as soon as I got close to them, they disappeared into the forest. I managed to only take a few blurry photos, but now we know what they look like and what they eat at this time of year.
After checking out the photos below, read Nichar’s next entry: Yai’s Monkeys
The Chao ban gather together for a group photo before the hard work begins.
View from the end of our trek up the mountain.
An unfortunately blurry photo of one of the monkeys.
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