monkeys are evil: a few words about Peru
Jun. 6th, 2007 12:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraSo, Peru! Haven't said too much, mostly been adjusting to being back and picking up the dozens of loose ends from before we left.
The several dozen bright red chigger bites on my feet are finally fading - our first destination in Peru was the jungle outside of Puerto Maldonado, in the eastern, Amazon river basin part of the country. We mostly wore knee-high rubber boots whenever we went walking off the boardwalks of the tourist lodge - necessary because of the ankle-deep mud, army ants, giant poisonous ants, etc - but during lunch one day, someone announced that the saddleback tamarind monkeys were making a raid on the banana storehouse, and we all rushed outside, in whatever shoes we had on, to ogle the monkeys and hand-feed them little pieces of banana (thereby distracting them from the storehouse.) The monkeys were adorable as they used their teeny little hands to grab the chunks of banana and stuff them into their little faces (although scarier when they used their little mouths to grab the banana, thus grazing your finger with their no-doubt disease-laden little mouths) but they used their extreme cuteness to lure us into standing around in the insect-infested grass under their trees for a good fifteen minutes, which is why I caution you that Monkeys Are Evil.
I could also explain how Tourguides Are Evil (remember the torture of Tantalus?), Condors Are Evil (at least if you suffer from a tendency to lean further and further out over ledges while watching something swoop around), Bingo Conducted In Spanish Is Evil (if you think you've won), but most of all, Cameras Are Evil when they develop a new bad habit of pretending to be taking pictures without actually taking them. We seem to be missing up to a third of the pictures we thought we took in the jungle; it remains to be seen what we're missing from the rest of the trip.
The several dozen bright red chigger bites on my feet are finally fading - our first destination in Peru was the jungle outside of Puerto Maldonado, in the eastern, Amazon river basin part of the country. We mostly wore knee-high rubber boots whenever we went walking off the boardwalks of the tourist lodge - necessary because of the ankle-deep mud, army ants, giant poisonous ants, etc - but during lunch one day, someone announced that the saddleback tamarind monkeys were making a raid on the banana storehouse, and we all rushed outside, in whatever shoes we had on, to ogle the monkeys and hand-feed them little pieces of banana (thereby distracting them from the storehouse.) The monkeys were adorable as they used their teeny little hands to grab the chunks of banana and stuff them into their little faces (although scarier when they used their little mouths to grab the banana, thus grazing your finger with their no-doubt disease-laden little mouths) but they used their extreme cuteness to lure us into standing around in the insect-infested grass under their trees for a good fifteen minutes, which is why I caution you that Monkeys Are Evil.
I could also explain how Tourguides Are Evil (remember the torture of Tantalus?), Condors Are Evil (at least if you suffer from a tendency to lean further and further out over ledges while watching something swoop around), Bingo Conducted In Spanish Is Evil (if you think you've won), but most of all, Cameras Are Evil when they develop a new bad habit of pretending to be taking pictures without actually taking them. We seem to be missing up to a third of the pictures we thought we took in the jungle; it remains to be seen what we're missing from the rest of the trip.
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Date: 2007-06-06 08:00 pm (UTC)Haven't you always wanted a monkey? :)
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Date: 2007-06-06 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-07 11:13 am (UTC)