La Senda Verde: Monkey Magic

If you are one of those nutters who takes the word of the vicious Old Testament literally, you will believe that in the Garden of Eden there was no death. Kentucky`s Creation Musuem shows vegetarian dinosaurs alongside Adam and Eve as a way of fitting real knowledge into a mythical setting but at La Senda Verde, I was reminded of this paradisical state as dogs, cats and birds waited together outside the food preparation room every morning to receive their breakfast.

The other likely visitors were the squirrel monkeys – Jimmy and Elvis - who would launch themselves out of a tree at you in their version of foraging. My main responsibility as a volunteer at the animal refuge was another species, the capuchin monkeys, which were at the other end of the land divided between two rivers (and now bordered on one side by a disastrous gold-mining project that the locals are organising against). At 8 every day I fed them porridge prepared by the owners (Vicki and Marcelo), had my own breakfast at 9, cleaned the capuchin tables and houses at 10, fed them a mostly-fruit lunch at 12 and then a mostly-vegetable dinner at 5. In addition, I usually fed the spectacled bear (Aruma) and cleaned his compound twice a day.

The animals are all rescued, normally from abuse, poaching or orphanship. The young capuchin were untethered and playful though one – Kimbo – tended towards the cry-baby side too. Then there were 8 adult capuchin; Naranja, Luna and Sereza were timid females who tended to avoid eye contact with me, Danny and Martin were males who I could interact with, while Mirka was a one-eyed female who took to me immediately. My favourite is a toss-up between Mirka and shoelace and button undoing Martin, though the best moment was when Luna groomed me. The other 2 adults were Ciruelo, the alpha-male, who escaped early in our stay but returned on more than one occasion and was eventually drugged and re-tethered. He went for me more than once without success yet was friendly enough when it came to feeding time. The other male was Pekos, the only caged monkey, who had escaped once and severed a previous volunteer`s tendon, apparently.

Feeding him consisted in a safety-first process something akin to the part in Silence of the Lambs where Hannibal Lecter goes through a routine supervised by two (later cannibalised) policemen.

There were three other species of monkey. The 5 spider monkeys utilised the whole of the refuge, one rushing into our cabaña while I was still in bed one morning and sitting with me briefly before leaving again. That was Zambo, who is the largest male and somewhat excitable: he frightened young visitors a few times. He habitually sat in great poses though and he was my favourite of this group, though the younger ones were predictably cuter. There were two owl-monkeys which (as the name implies) were nocturnal and therefore we did not have much to do with them. Finally, there were two red howlers, one of which was a baby which arrived just before us and clung on to the other (older but not yet mature female) who tolerated it for a few days and then left, not to return while we were there.

The work was hard after the other volunteers left, though more of it fell on Jun, but there were great rewards in the relationship with the other primates. If you ever find yourself in Bolivia with time to volunteer for a worthy cause, La Senda Verde comes highly recommended by this apeman.