The monkey puzzle

Things have finally calmed down here, and I can now see how the sanctuary would struggle financially during the tourist off-season from June - August. Flávio has taken his parasitic ways elsewhere, but not before organising a big tour of the sanctuary for the poor kids of Pipa, the same ones that usually try and pickpocket me. Not a bad auld lot really, neither is Flávio either, for that matter. He also found quite a few sickly/dead animals, which David believes is due to a strain of virus that killed off a large percentage of sanctuary animals a few years ago. I think he mentioned encephalitis, but I was too busy fawning over the sick baby monkey. They have been the worst affected, along with a marsupial-type creature, with the unfortunate name of rato-cachorro, (dog-rat, there is a picture of one in the second batch of photos I think). Samples of tissue were sent to the ministry of health, as well as a crack team in America, that was set up after AIDs was initially passed from monkeys to humans. 

But no need to worry about the rest of the sanctuary wildlife, they are all in fine fettle, and a famous Brazilian wildlife photographer rocked up recently to take some stunning pictures of birds. The best were of the beija-flors, (humming birds, but it literally means flower-kiss). A black and blue beija-flor came right up in front of my face recently, hovering in mid-air. 'You're alright Alex', he seemed to say, before departing on his merry way.  The photographer works at the 'casa da moeda', which is like the national mint, because all Brazilian notes and coins have pictures of animals on them. The picture of the Jaguar on the 50 real note was taken by this guy, but not the hawksbill turtlt on the 2 real.

Which leads us nicely back to turtles does it not? Daphne has left Pipa to address the international symposium of marine turtles, so the extra work of weighing the animal, extracting the blood and separating the syrum isn't required any more, which means a bit less work on the beach. Unfortunately, the departure of one of the students on placement, (Rodrigo), and the failure of the quad conicided, which meant that I spent two consecutive nights on the beach, walking all night. 35 minutes walking followed by a 30 minute rest, from 8pm to 5am. Tough stuff, especially with the current neap tide, (maré morte in Portuguese), which means there is no firm sand, and every step is a bit of a struggle. 

At least we're getting some positive feedback from the public. Petrobras, who sponsor TAMAR (the turtle project), had some officials in Pipa recently, and they were brought out at night to see a mother nesting. They were really grateful for the whole ordeal, and I was especially pleased when I realized that I had encountered this same turtle 5 years ago, on my last trip. She has a large piece missing from the back of her shell, so it was hard to forget her. I can' put my finger on it, but there was something really gratifying about that. Perhaps it simply reinforced the fact that these trips weren't separate stages, but part of an overall work. I dunno. We also had our first public 'abertura' of the season, which is late-evening opening of a nest that is almost ready to hatch. This is always good fun, and I was official translator about the work of TAMAR. For  example, did you know the ratio of females that develop in the eggs to males is dependent on the temperature of the sand? And it is therefore important that turtles nest both here and further south to get a good balance of males to females? Even for the manliest of men like myself, it's hard not to find the flood of baby turtles cute, all racing for the sea, strugling over footprints. There should be a video of this uploading, but I here there is a problem with the video? I dunno. 

I met two Irish girls at the event, and it was nice to know that I wasn't the only pasty face on this continent. They told me that they had been smuggling Barry's tea around the whole of Soth America on a ten-month trip, which, instead of inducing nostalgia like one of those old ads, I found rather depressing to be honest. With all due respect to Barry's tea of course. 

My Brazilan mentality was firmly in place after 2 recent weekend trips though. The weekend before last I went to the huge market in Goianinha, which packs out the whole town. Haggling over whether I got 18 or 20 bananas for 1 real made me feel much mor Brazilian, and we stocked ourselves up completely. I thought I had finally seen all the fruits of the northeast at the market, but then I got a sudden invitation to a trip to the interior, which opened up a whole new ballpark to me.

David and a bunch of do-gooders managed to get money from a Dutch ecological consortium to buy a group of mountains/hills deep in the interior, totalling 750 hectares. Part of the argument to protect the area was the fact that it is the only habitat for a rare species of monkey, but the preservation of the caatinga, or scrubland is important too, (they are a bit worried that a local biologist is going to classify the monkey a sub-species, but the ink is dry on the agreement now).

The interior is an odd place. We drove 5 hours through the baking sun, but still kept finding towns and villages in this semi-desert.  In each town I was openly stared at, for my blonde hair and striking good-looks probably, and I only got some respite from this in Santa Cruz, where a tourist-trade has built up due to the large statue of St. Rita. The interior survives mainly off cattle these days, but it did have a huge cotton trade, the quality of which was better than Egyptian. It ended suddenly when a cotton-loving weevil was introduced to the area, in what most people suspect was a successful ploy by the americans to allow the cotton insustry in the southern states to compete.

I saw the interior at it's greenest time of the year, but even so every plant was withering and spiny. We arrived at the mountain park and gorged ourselves on some delicious organic food, courtesy of the woman who had owned the range. She had tried to set up a trails-park, but was unsuccessful, and now cares for some local wildlife in a lovely house/pousada at the foot of the range. The group of nine then did a big hike around one of the mountains, and found plenty of monkey evidence, such as broken nut shells, and the rocks used to break them, but no monkeys. The rest of the group were enthralled by the trees and shrubs, and explained some of the marvels of the area, but most of it was lost on me. I was hoping to get to the top, and this wasn't really possible with David on tow, but I did get some nice views about half-way up. We even found some ancient rock paintings, and I got a bit of a cold reception about how they looked like a 5 year-old's crayon drawing, but it was probably just lost in translation. 

In the morning we did a small section of the edge of the property, and got some GPS marks, as well as telling off a few hunters, but there will be no way to stop them getting into the park. More delicious food ensued, and I had fun playing the house's semi-domesticated animals, such as the maracajá which is a small jaguar. I slept most of the way back, but the land-rover broke down in some stretch of baked nowhere, which made me feel like I was in one of Mum's Kenyan stories. Luckily, Mcgyver/Valdenir fixed everything with a bit of sticky-tape, and off we went. A really incredible trip, and well worth writing home about.

Finally, any ideas for St. Paddys day for me, other than getting blind drunk? I went for a pint with the lads recently, and had to admit sheepishly that the live show on TV in the bar, with the tight-jeaned idiot dancing around, was Irish. Most of the Riverdance show was ok, but I don't think I'm comfortable enough to pull off a one man Paddy´s day show in Pipa. Or pull off a one-man full stop. On that note I'm going for a Barry's tea.

Look after yourselves.