We've been back from Panama for two weeks, but do you know what happens when you take time off? Apparently the work just piles up waiting for you to return. What is up with that, work? I thought you'd finish yourself while I was gone.
The weather was about 95F warmer there than it is here, and we spent much of our time hanging out on the beach. Around sunset each night, there was a specific tree (el arbol de los monos, we called it) where a herd (group? family? pack?) of white-faced capuchin monkeys would gather and hop around and make little squeaky noises and generally be adorable. There were also howler monkeys in the forest (hoo hoo hoooooo hoo) but we only heard them and never saw even one. And there were hermit crabs, oh so many hermit crabs.
We went to this great animal rehab center in Boquete called Paradise Gardens. They take in orphaned, injured, or otherwise sad little animals and nurse them back to health, then set them free again. They also are part of a world-wide bird breeding program (for nifty rain forest birds like macaws and toucans) to help endandered species with low numbers.
One thing that was totally awesome was that many of these animals are very social and because the whole point was to help them get healthy and happy again, interaction was encouraged! So the monkeys run over when you come near them and they untie your shoes and reach in your pockets and are totally great and awesome. There were also super-tiny Geoffrey's Tamarins, which are about the size of an orange. They zip around and will only stop if you have fruit for them, or if you pet their bellies. Otherwise they have no need for you.
We even got to pet a Margay, which is a big cat like an Ocelot, but they have extra-special ankle joints that allow them to climb down trees face-first! She purred and rolled over and kneaded just like a giant housecat. A giant killer housecat. (The Margay had a sad story which was that a farmer caught the kitten and thought it was cute until it got to be a giant cat. Then instead of just setting it free, they locked it in a tiny cage in the dark back of a chicken coop! So when she was brought to the center she couldn't even walk. Now she runs around and catches fish and any unfortunate birds who wander into her cage, and loves to say hi to the visitors.)
The best animal was the baby sloth. Her name was Temba. She wanted to be held, all the time, and she is soft and wooly like a lamb. If you tried to put her down, she would made the saddest little keen, like "ehn ehn ehhhhn" and then she'd crawl up the side of her cage and out the door and back into your arms. Oh man. Baby sloths can be fast if they are moving towards snuggles. Once she got settled on her little blankie then she just sat there and smiled. You may notice a very strong resemblance to a Muppet.
Sloth trivia: they only go to the bathroom once a week. In the wild, they climb down from their trees, do their business (and bury it so predators don't find them), then climb up another tree to spend the next week in. Temba's bathroom day is Sunday.
