Same Old, Same Old

I haven´t written in a while because honestly not much new has happened here. I´m deep into the routine of going into the field every day and following, most likely looking for, monkeys, and usually spending the rest of the day, either morning or afternoon, reading or walking around the waterfalls. It has been raining here a lot lately, at least one or two days a week. And by rain, I mean a torrential downpour with bonechilling thunder and lightning. We literally can´t work when this happens and we end up losing the monkeys for a couple of days. And lately our monkey group has been running off into a part of the woods where there are no trails. After a couple of hours of just walking around the forest looking for them, or hacking your way through impassable undergrowth just trying to keep up with the monkeys, we get pretty tired and frustrated and call it quits, only to try to return in the evening to where they might sleep. As nice as it is to have some days off to relax or do stuff around town, it´s actually very frustrating not being able to do our jobs and get the data we need to collect. My mother will be delighted to know, and I´m sure will gloat about this when I get home, that I have actually taken to wearing the silly safari vest thing she made me buy before I left. I wore it when I wanted to look silly for a day and found that it was actually quite handy. I no longer need to take my big backpack into the field with me everyday, and instead put all the little things I need, radio, batteries, notebook, water, snacks, etc. So, as silly as I look, thats mom.

A few days ago there was a massive storm so going into the field would have been dangerous. Dan, Boi, and I decided to go to town, fully decked out in rain gear, and grab some lunch. While there we decided to retrieve a frisbee that we had lost a few weeks ago. A few weeks ago, Renata, who has since left, threw the frisbee into a steep forested area by the river in town. At the time it seemed impossible to get because of the incline and the massive swarms of biting ants. With the rain however, the ants would be kept in their holes. With rain gear and rubber boots, the three of us bombed into forest embankment. It was actually easier than expected to find the frisbee and after climbing out of the ravine, the three of us rejoiced at our small victory. As silly as that story may seem, it was an exciting day and just about the only real thing I´ve done in the past few weeks.

A couple of weeks ago, Boi and I were walking on the Upper Trail, Paseo Superior, above the Cataratas towards closing time. The park guard that was closing is a friend of ours and he actually let us go back onto the paseo after he made everyone else leave. Boi and I were the only two people in Argentina looking at the waterfalls that evening. We stayed by ourselves marvelling at their power for over half an hour until it started to get dark. For those few minutes the waterfalls existed only for us. It was really awesome.




Before Renata left, my whole group took a day off and took a high speed boat ride under the falls. We all dressed up in silly clothes and got absolutely drenched by the waterfalls. It was super cool. They take you really close and you can barely open your eyes from all the water spraying.