In addition to having basic kitchen facilities the park runs a very inexpensive vegetarian cafe that serves breakfast and lunch and snacks all day. The food is good and the prices very reasonable, and you can run a tab for the time you're volunteering and settle up when you leave. There's beer, too, and usually at the end of the day people would gather at the long outside tables for a beer and and to tell stories about their animals and how the day went. The camaraderie was fantastic.
Nate's experience at the park was decidedly more lukewarm than mine, for understandable reasons. He got quite ill partway through our time there. What started as standard traveler's belly issues escalated to the point that he went to the little local hospital, where they did tests and put him on antibiotics. For more than a week that we were there he wasn't in good health. Nate was placed in the magnificent aviary, with a lot of parrots, 40 macaws, 2 toucans, a few hawks and two incredible eagles. There was a massive cage called the mafia with 80 parakeets. And lots of turtles, all non-native. The problem with the aviary was organization.
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| Nate and I visiting with Monchito, a macaw raised among dogs and thus behaves a lot like one. |
There are several monkey departments, and the Capuchin quarantine where I worked was healthy monkeys who are hopefully slated for eventual release. It did house a number of monkeys who will live there for the rest of their lives as they are either too crazy or old and lacking the necessary life skills to survive in the wild. It's a pretty cushy rest home. Our work days were much longer and demanding than walking the cats...we were in by 7-7:30am and seldom done before 7pm, with an hour and a bit off in the middle of the day. There was lots of downtime, though, especially in the early afternoon when the monkeys were much more mellow in the afternoon heat. We were usually about 6-8 people working in "the Q". The monkey feeding schedule was breakfast at 7:00, a snack at 10:00, lunch at 11:45, a snack at 2:00, and dinner at 4:30, and a cleanup after every meal. By the end of the day we were knackered, and would basically just shower and eat and be in bed by 10:00. Their food was fruit and vegetables and occasionally eggs, rice or bread. Their protein was a porridge called api - basically runny oatmeal fortified with powdered milk, honey, and cinnamon, served twice a day. They LOVE that stuff and would start shrieking with excitement when we'd make our rounds with water bottles full of it.
About five to six hours of our day was spent cleaning up after them, a formidable task requiring brooms and hoses and vast amounts of water to flush all the fruit and vegetable scraps and monkey poo. As far as monkeys go, capuchins don't smell unpleasant at all, in fact they smell kind of nice, like healthy puppies. Their urine and feces is also surprisingly neutral - it's pretty likely you'll get peed on almost every day and it really didn't smell like anything at all. Their feces smelled just like their food, so it wasn't a gross or grim task to clean up after them. Their little bodies had astonishingly quick metabolism - feed them wedges of papaya for snack and out it comes, twenty minutes later, looking and smelling pretty much exactly as it did before you fed it to them. Our alpha male, Cesar, had a noticeably strong, sweet musk, but I wouldn't say he was outright stinky.
About five to six hours of our day was spent cleaning up after them, a formidable task requiring brooms and hoses and vast amounts of water to flush all the fruit and vegetable scraps and monkey poo. As far as monkeys go, capuchins don't smell unpleasant at all, in fact they smell kind of nice, like healthy puppies. Their urine and feces is also surprisingly neutral - it's pretty likely you'll get peed on almost every day and it really didn't smell like anything at all. Their feces smelled just like their food, so it wasn't a gross or grim task to clean up after them. Their little bodies had astonishingly quick metabolism - feed them wedges of papaya for snack and out it comes, twenty minutes later, looking and smelling pretty much exactly as it did before you fed it to them. Our alpha male, Cesar, had a noticeably strong, sweet musk, but I wouldn't say he was outright stinky.
The Q was divided into two sides, Heaven and Earth. Earth is all caged monkeys, some very dangerous and insane, but mostly just lacking the social skills to be out and about on runners during the day. The really dangerous ones had fine mesh walls on their cages on top of the large chain-link fencing of the rest, because if a big male were to grab you, even through a cage wall, they're extremely strong and a bite could result in lots of stitches.
In Heaven we'd have about 25 monkeys out on runners in big play areas from 7:30 until about 5:30. A "runner" is rope that zigzags all over the compound play areas, and the monkeys wear a little belt with a leash of about 4-5 feet long with a carabiner that clips into sliding rings on the rope. Careful consideration was made in placing them throughout the various play areas, of their friendships and personality conflicts. Also, a few of the monkeys out on runners don't like all people, so they`re placed in specific areas where most volunteers could stay out of their way.
In Heaven there is a large cage with 9 babies, all under the age of two. Occasionally a few would escape but they'd just hang out around the Q for a few days until we'd manage to catch them, which is really difficult. Lulu, Hugo and Wanny were often out of their cage. The babies are insanely cute. Some of them suck their thumbs.
I was really surprised how quickly I developed friendships with certain monkeys. Most of them are abandoned or confiscated pets and have plenty of quirks. While we feed them, work around them cleaning, they were always on us. They're quite small - the biggest male on a runner was Gumi, at about 12lbs, close to fully grown, but the tiny juvenile females were more like 5lbs, with torsos barely larger than a loaf of bread. They have SO MANY vocalizations, many variations of scream and shriek, but lots of quiet ones, little trills and murmurs and clicks. The conversations that they'd have when grooming sort of sound like an organic version of the communication between R2-D2 and C-3PO, little clicks and squeaks. My favorite sound was slightly inquisitive and wary...their foreheads would crease, their eyes open really wide and their mouths form perfect little O's. It was a quick "who-who-who" kind of like a cross between a pigeon and an owl.
Their personalities were as different as those of your friends and family. Tiny Yvonne is introspective and wimpy and easily intimidated by others. I watched her getting braver and learning to play more, we were excited when she had a successful day playing hard in "the square", a central play area covered with a roof and lots of ladders, swings and platforms. There's usually 6 or 7 monkeys there during the day and lots of the really athletic males like to play there. She loves it when we bring her pebbles of various sizes and she plays with them and experiments with the different noises they make when she clicks them together. She'll eat an entire meal sitting on your shoulder if you'll let her cause she's a total chicken about defending her food from other monkeys.
A gang of adolescent boy monkeys around three years old or so was Lilush, Paqueño and Eric. These guys were hilarious best friends and so much fun. They love the sneak attack and dive bomb your head when you'd walk by. They wrestle constantly and had remarkable self control when wrestling with people, their play bites never hurt, always with the soft jaw. They dangle from their runners and love when you come up to them to play. They love to search pockets and I started tucking treats in my pockets for them to find, like handfuls of granola, dried corn or peanuts. Lilush had a slight underbite causing one of his lower fangs to always protrude in a rakishly handsome way. Eric was dark brown but Lilush and Paqueño blond. Sometimes they'd play too hard with each other and someone would get upset and start to scream and we'd have to separate them for a time out, but they'd be pining for each other shortly after. I have some amazing photos of these guys spooning in their sleep. Sometimes they'd bully other monkeys and need to be yelled at to stop.
Most precious to me of all was Ruperto, a tiny blond male about 3 years old. My first day in the quarantine I was a little jittery..I knew that bites occurred, some monkeys are unpredictable, and I was wary. I was standing watching the moneys play and asked a Japanese-Australian girl named Ai about Ruperto, and she gasped and said "go to him RIGHT NOW". I offered my arm and he kissed my hand, chirped, and hopped on my shoulder.
So sensitive and clever, he loved to play the clapping game, grabbing my hands and making me clap, or slapping my hand on the ground. A serious cuddler with a little old man face. At one point he had acquired a coconut, and it was cracked. He was trying to extract the water from it and was striking it with a rock (Capuchins are considered the smartest new world monkey and devise tools for themselves) when I came along. I sat down with him and he started shrieking and and made me hit the coconut by holding my hand and trying to make my hand hit it. I was amazed.
At one point a jerk named Pasqui, known to bite unexpectedly, bit my forehead in a skirmish where I offended him by not feeding him first in the crowd. It barely broke the skin, it healed leaving no mark, but it put on a remarkable display of blood running down my face and I had to rush off to the vets to have it cleaned up. I had had to pass Ruperto's perch on my way to the clinic, and when I came back five minutes later he chirped and immediately hopped on my shoulder, put his face within inches of mine and examined me with unmistakeable concern. The volunteers around me were equally amazed when his little pink tongue darted out and gently licked my cut. It was so small it wasn't bandaged, so I had to turn around and go back to Luis, the vet, to have it cleaned again. I immediately started scheming my kidnapping plan.
A couple days before I left I was hanging out with Ruperto, sitting on the ground playing, and he was right beside me. Right behind him a broom clattered to the ground and he startled, jumped on my arm and bit me, barely hard enough to leave indentations from his teeth. He was immediately aghast, he looked horrified, and curled up into a tiny ball as they do when they're really upset and started crying. Gabby advised I walk away and let him calm down. I returned a few minutes later with a couple of peanuts and he trilled and climbed on my shoulder and started cracking them with his teeth. To my surprise he really wanted ME to eat them. I resisted, cramming my lips together, and he tried to wedge his tiny fingers between my lips to force peanuts into my mouth. It's so very easy to anthropomorphize with these soft, furry little people, but it really seemed like he was trying to make amends for biting me.
The problem with this kind of interaction is that they're too comfortable with people. Ruperto, needy little Conejo (which translates as rabbit in spanish), Federica, Pepa, Jonathan, Tosati, were all monkeys who tended to turn to people way too often for entertainment and solace. Jonathan was tedious cause as much as he was a sweet little cuddlebug he would bite you when you tried to put him down. It's not going to help them become candidates to form the social groups that eventually get released. You can't just release a monkey into the wild alone, they won't survive...the refuge stages the release by transferring monkeys to a semi wild context, no cages or runners but where they still stick around to get fed, and establish a functional social group with a ruling alpha male. Eventually they are transferred to national parks around Bolivia. These monkeys that were so fun for me to get to know aren't likely successes in the wild. The aloof and distant ones like Franca, Claudia and Tatita will be better off. Unfortunately there is rapidly diminishing suitable habitat out there in the the jungle for them as deforestation in Bolivia is increasing at a tragic rate.
I had no idea how undescribably enjoyable it would be to be groomed by a monkey. The best groomer of all was Queen, an older female. Queen hates Bolivians, and by extension anyone of darker-skinned latin American appearance, owing to the bad pet situation from which she came. She'd bare her teeth and scream at them and bite hard enough to draw blood if they got too close. Not fitting that description, we got along splendidly. Queen will never be released, she is way too socially dysfunctional with most monkeys. We'd put her on a runner off in a shady corner alone and she was happiest that way. If I came to visit she'd trill happily and climb on my shoulder and get to work grooming my head, her gentle, deft fingers picking through my hair, murmuring and chirping the whole time. The problem with a proper grooming session at Queen's Beauty Salon is that I'd be so relaxed and sleepy after that it would be really hard to get anything done.
It's amazing that I got to know them as well as I did in such a short time, how quickly it felt completely normal to take care of 70 monkeys every day. That I knew some of their food preferences, even. I loved watching them catch flies in their fast little fists. Once I found a fat yellow caterpillar when I was shucking corn for their dinner and I took it to Ruperto and he shrieked with pleasure and ate it. Eric loves papaya seeds and sucks the gelatinous coating off them and spits out the black part. Marco is kind of indifferent to bananas. Tatita isn't big on papaya. Gumi loves cucumber and eats all the flesh right down and leaves the green skin. Gentle, sweet Hilde, a caged female on the Earth side, loves cucumber seeds and I would collect them for her when they fell out of reach of her cage. She's a hilarious manicurist, she loves to groom hands, gently picking at flecks of dry skin and cleaning around your nails. Chuki, Hilde's big male cage-mate, has a broken jaw that healed crooked and has the most fascinating adaptations to how he eats. At first I perceived Chuki as scary and aggressive, but I realized it's all an act. If he tried to bite you with intention his jaw doesn't line up anyway. When people come to fawn over Hilde he hollers and bangs the walls of his cage, but he's jealous, and if I always greeted him first and held his hands, cooing at him for a minute, he'd be calm as can be. Actually, in general the monkeys love to hold hands. Their little soft palms and amazing perfect fingernails were really beautiful and it's a really pleasant hand to hold. Sometimes it made me sad when you'd walk past a cage and they'd extend their hands and just want you to hang out and visit.
Health risks of working at Parque Machia are not what you might expect, bad bites are rare, and no parasites. The animals are all vaccinated. What we did live with are is lots of bug bites and sunburns, though. As volunteers are handling the animals continuously and getting licked a fair bit, we weren't permitted to wear DEET, any natural repellant containing eucalyptus oil (toxic to them if ingested) or sunblock...we just had to cover up. The mosquitos weren't bad, it was the evil little sandflies. A quarter the size of a mosquito, you can't see them or feel them bite and thus slap them to lessen the impact of the bite...it takes a few hours for the bite to form a welt and it then becomes a little blister far itchier than a mosquito bite, and lasting for more days. At one point we were working in a raging thunderstorm and my rubber boots were full of water and I just decided to give up, be wet, and work in my Chaco sandals and shorts. It's the jungle so the rain is warm anyway. The sandflies reproduce like crazy in wet conditions and by evening I looked like I had chickenpox on my legs, but hadn't realized what was developing until my legs were a mess. It was a really rough few days. At least they don't transmit Dengue or malaria, and they're too small to bite through clothing. It's so hot that all manners of prickly heat rashes abound and I heard about a few nasty fungal foot issues from working in sweaty rubber boots all day.
The social atmosphere was a little reminiscent of Lake O'hara in how quickly people become friends working hard together. We were an eclectic bunch, from all over the world ranging mostly from early twenties to late thirties. We met a lot of really interesting people, hailing from Canada, USA, Italy, Holland, S.Korea, Sweden, France, Israel, Germany, Chile, Bolivia, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Scotland, England. When we arrived there were about 30 people, and with daily arrivals and departures the numbers were usually about 35.
There was an exception to the normal age requirement of eighteen when an Italian family arrived, a mom and her seventeen and fifteen year old daughters. The park director Nena made a judgment call that the teenagers were in the right frame of mind. The fifteen year old, Giuditta, was with us in the Q and their mom, Gloria, in the aviary with Nate. We were initially apprehensive about Giuditta cause the monkeys can be scary at times and the workload is huge, but they're a farm family, and it was immediately apparent that she's one rock solid teenager who knows how to work hard. I really enjoyed her attitude, and my respect for her was forged one afternoon when a curious dog decided to enter the quarantine compound. Of the three resident big black dogs, one can be a little testy, and a few of us were trying to herd it out of the area, but hadn't physically grabbed it yet. He was really curious and did not want to leave. The monkeys were going bonkers, and had given the call to go to the absolute top of all cages and runners, screaming like crazy. Giuditta barged past us and up to the dog and grabbed it by the scruff of the neck shouting "PERRITO, NON!" over and over again. Perro is the spanish word for dog, perrito is an affectionate diminutive...like doggie. That huge dog cowered before her, lost all its bravado and she dragged it out of the area. It turns out that there are eight dogs on their farm and she really feels confident with dogs. Paul (Holland), Elin (Sweden) and I were handling the situation with minimal success until she came along.
On the day we left I had to make three visits to the Q to say goodbye to the monkeys because it was so hard. Monkeys immediately started making appearances in my dreams as soon as I started work with them and my monkey dreams continued for a full week after we left the refuge. I have mentioned to Nate numerous times that I think I will need to go back to CIWY again some day for a longer stay. Many volunteer wildlife refuges in SE Asia are very expensive, but this was only $200 and I loved every minute of it.
In Heaven we'd have about 25 monkeys out on runners in big play areas from 7:30 until about 5:30. A "runner" is rope that zigzags all over the compound play areas, and the monkeys wear a little belt with a leash of about 4-5 feet long with a carabiner that clips into sliding rings on the rope. Careful consideration was made in placing them throughout the various play areas, of their friendships and personality conflicts. Also, a few of the monkeys out on runners don't like all people, so they`re placed in specific areas where most volunteers could stay out of their way.
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| Federica eating a branch. Tatita in the background. |
I was really surprised how quickly I developed friendships with certain monkeys. Most of them are abandoned or confiscated pets and have plenty of quirks. While we feed them, work around them cleaning, they were always on us. They're quite small - the biggest male on a runner was Gumi, at about 12lbs, close to fully grown, but the tiny juvenile females were more like 5lbs, with torsos barely larger than a loaf of bread. They have SO MANY vocalizations, many variations of scream and shriek, but lots of quiet ones, little trills and murmurs and clicks. The conversations that they'd have when grooming sort of sound like an organic version of the communication between R2-D2 and C-3PO, little clicks and squeaks. My favorite sound was slightly inquisitive and wary...their foreheads would crease, their eyes open really wide and their mouths form perfect little O's. It was a quick "who-who-who" kind of like a cross between a pigeon and an owl.
Their personalities were as different as those of your friends and family. Tiny Yvonne is introspective and wimpy and easily intimidated by others. I watched her getting braver and learning to play more, we were excited when she had a successful day playing hard in "the square", a central play area covered with a roof and lots of ladders, swings and platforms. There's usually 6 or 7 monkeys there during the day and lots of the really athletic males like to play there. She loves it when we bring her pebbles of various sizes and she plays with them and experiments with the different noises they make when she clicks them together. She'll eat an entire meal sitting on your shoulder if you'll let her cause she's a total chicken about defending her food from other monkeys.
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| Lilush and Eric napping. |
Most precious to me of all was Ruperto, a tiny blond male about 3 years old. My first day in the quarantine I was a little jittery..I knew that bites occurred, some monkeys are unpredictable, and I was wary. I was standing watching the moneys play and asked a Japanese-Australian girl named Ai about Ruperto, and she gasped and said "go to him RIGHT NOW". I offered my arm and he kissed my hand, chirped, and hopped on my shoulder.
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| Federica grooming Ruperto. |
At one point a jerk named Pasqui, known to bite unexpectedly, bit my forehead in a skirmish where I offended him by not feeding him first in the crowd. It barely broke the skin, it healed leaving no mark, but it put on a remarkable display of blood running down my face and I had to rush off to the vets to have it cleaned up. I had had to pass Ruperto's perch on my way to the clinic, and when I came back five minutes later he chirped and immediately hopped on my shoulder, put his face within inches of mine and examined me with unmistakeable concern. The volunteers around me were equally amazed when his little pink tongue darted out and gently licked my cut. It was so small it wasn't bandaged, so I had to turn around and go back to Luis, the vet, to have it cleaned again. I immediately started scheming my kidnapping plan.
A couple days before I left I was hanging out with Ruperto, sitting on the ground playing, and he was right beside me. Right behind him a broom clattered to the ground and he startled, jumped on my arm and bit me, barely hard enough to leave indentations from his teeth. He was immediately aghast, he looked horrified, and curled up into a tiny ball as they do when they're really upset and started crying. Gabby advised I walk away and let him calm down. I returned a few minutes later with a couple of peanuts and he trilled and climbed on my shoulder and started cracking them with his teeth. To my surprise he really wanted ME to eat them. I resisted, cramming my lips together, and he tried to wedge his tiny fingers between my lips to force peanuts into my mouth. It's so very easy to anthropomorphize with these soft, furry little people, but it really seemed like he was trying to make amends for biting me.
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| This is Pepa. She's very sweet. Notice all the bug bites on my arms! |
I had no idea how undescribably enjoyable it would be to be groomed by a monkey. The best groomer of all was Queen, an older female. Queen hates Bolivians, and by extension anyone of darker-skinned latin American appearance, owing to the bad pet situation from which she came. She'd bare her teeth and scream at them and bite hard enough to draw blood if they got too close. Not fitting that description, we got along splendidly. Queen will never be released, she is way too socially dysfunctional with most monkeys. We'd put her on a runner off in a shady corner alone and she was happiest that way. If I came to visit she'd trill happily and climb on my shoulder and get to work grooming my head, her gentle, deft fingers picking through my hair, murmuring and chirping the whole time. The problem with a proper grooming session at Queen's Beauty Salon is that I'd be so relaxed and sleepy after that it would be really hard to get anything done.
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| Hilde cleaning my hands. |
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| Hilde has very expressive eyes. |
Health risks of working at Parque Machia are not what you might expect, bad bites are rare, and no parasites. The animals are all vaccinated. What we did live with are is lots of bug bites and sunburns, though. As volunteers are handling the animals continuously and getting licked a fair bit, we weren't permitted to wear DEET, any natural repellant containing eucalyptus oil (toxic to them if ingested) or sunblock...we just had to cover up. The mosquitos weren't bad, it was the evil little sandflies. A quarter the size of a mosquito, you can't see them or feel them bite and thus slap them to lessen the impact of the bite...it takes a few hours for the bite to form a welt and it then becomes a little blister far itchier than a mosquito bite, and lasting for more days. At one point we were working in a raging thunderstorm and my rubber boots were full of water and I just decided to give up, be wet, and work in my Chaco sandals and shorts. It's the jungle so the rain is warm anyway. The sandflies reproduce like crazy in wet conditions and by evening I looked like I had chickenpox on my legs, but hadn't realized what was developing until my legs were a mess. It was a really rough few days. At least they don't transmit Dengue or malaria, and they're too small to bite through clothing. It's so hot that all manners of prickly heat rashes abound and I heard about a few nasty fungal foot issues from working in sweaty rubber boots all day.
The social atmosphere was a little reminiscent of Lake O'hara in how quickly people become friends working hard together. We were an eclectic bunch, from all over the world ranging mostly from early twenties to late thirties. We met a lot of really interesting people, hailing from Canada, USA, Italy, Holland, S.Korea, Sweden, France, Israel, Germany, Chile, Bolivia, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Scotland, England. When we arrived there were about 30 people, and with daily arrivals and departures the numbers were usually about 35.
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| People hanging out at the CIWY cafe. |
On the day we left I had to make three visits to the Q to say goodbye to the monkeys because it was so hard. Monkeys immediately started making appearances in my dreams as soon as I started work with them and my monkey dreams continued for a full week after we left the refuge. I have mentioned to Nate numerous times that I think I will need to go back to CIWY again some day for a longer stay. Many volunteer wildlife refuges in SE Asia are very expensive, but this was only $200 and I loved every minute of it.
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