There’s a group of howler monkeys voicing their opinions nearby as I type.\u00c2\u00a0 I can hear them through the window. It’s pretty quiet, so they’re probably several hundred meters away in the forest, I’m guessing.<\/p>\n
Saw tamarind monkeys today on the way back from breakfast.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s a group that hangs out in the camp and I had never noticed them before, but Tony pointed them out.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a group of about 9.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re tiny, maybe the size of a large rodent.\u00c2\u00a0 They ran all through the trees from the stream by the dining hall to beyond the lab.<\/p>\n
It’s a frustrating technology morning for Tony.\u00c2\u00a0 First, he downloaded nearly six days of data from his GPS only to find that the memory holds three days, and defaults to wrapping around. This means that the most recent three days overwrote the previous three days.\u00c2\u00a0 That sucked.\u00c2\u00a0 Then, we had planned to walk out to one of the camera traps by the river, about 2km, and replace the batteries and memory card on the camera.\u00c2\u00a0 We hiked out there, longer than we thought because one area was flooded out and we had to skirt around it, and when we got there, he realized the batteries were not in Tony’s pocket.\u00c2\u00a0 A wasted trip for him. But hey, I enjoyed the walk, and the spot is really beautiful, right by the river.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t get any shots though, too much foliage.<\/p>\n
Update on Jos\u00c3\u00a9: we ran into him in the forest today, taking down his traps.\u00c2\u00a0 He told us it turns out there’s no room on the Friday plane from Coca (where the boat lands) to Quito is full, so he’ll have to stay a day in Coca before he gets to Quito.<\/p>\n
Did another test with the GPS unit, this time on the dock of the river.\u00c2\u00a0 Results:\u00c2\u00a0 nothing.\u00c2\u00a0 Sigh. It was pleasant to sit out by the river while it collected data though.\u00c2\u00a0 Got through a couple more chapters of Moby Dick<\/em> while butterflies landed on my legs.<\/p>\n The big generator went out this afternoon, so they’ve got the lab on a small generator.\u00c2\u00a0 Now we have the fragrance of gasoline exhaust wafting in the window.<\/p>\n The food here is pretty good. It’s simple, rice with most meals, and all the bread is the same sandwich buns (hamburger buns, basically). This morning we had French toast made with the buns, and tonight we had broccoli and cauliflower over noodles in a cheese sauce, with garlic bread from the same buns.\u00c2\u00a0 Lunch was a to-go pack for the forest, two ham and cheese sandwiches on, you guessed it, the same buns.\u00c2\u00a0 The folks cooking are pretty creative with a limited set of staples to work with.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve also seen an amazing variety of uses of bananas.\u00c2\u00a0 Tonight they were poached in a sugar sauce, I think. Sometimes there are banana chips, or grilled bananas.\u00c2\u00a0 There are always mangoes and some other fresh fruits available, usually apples and passionfruit.<\/p>\n Tonight for fun, I explained how GPS works, and Tony played human evolution raps from his class. Now there’s a more serious conversation about how to identify individual monkeys from the coloration of their genitalia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 15 Jan 2009 There’s a group of howler monkeys voicing their opinions nearby as I type.\u00c2\u00a0 I can hear them through the window. It’s pretty…<\/p>\n