The last week has been a bit of a crazy week. After only 13 days of life on this planet, my god daughter Sarita was attacked by a wild male spider monkey and had horrific injuries. The vets tried to save her life but she had lost most of her intestines and her liver, and all of her ribs on one side were crushed. The poor little thing was put to sleep after fighting bravely for her life for well over an hour. The next day another one of our monkeys, Tomasita, gave birth prematurely, possibly brought on due to the stress of the events from the day before. The baby was still alive when we went to open the cage in the morning but the mother had abandoned it. The vets gave it mouth to mouth but it died soon after of hypothermia. It was an overwhelmingly sad 24 hours and really hit home the harsh reality of nature. I always knew I would become attched to the animals here, but the sadness I felt for these two mothers and their innocent and so very fragile offspring made me realise that leaving this place will be a lot harder than I originally thought.
The very same day that Tomasita lost her baby boy, another one of our monkeys, Quilla, went into labour. She had had problems giving birth to her first daughter Pancarita and so the vets were somewhat concerned about the birth and so she was brought down to the vets bedroom to relax and be monitered. After 2 lots of hormones to induce birth and 26 hours of labour she gave birth on the bed between Nena (the park director) and myself to a beautiful baby girl, Cusisiña (happiness in Aymara). Mother is very tired but both seem to be doing well. Some doors close and others open... this reminded me of the beauty of nature.
Baby Cusisiña, 1 day old
Nena and I have shared many many tears over the last week, and already now I am understanding the good that come out of terrible situations. The friendship between nena and myself has deepened, and being a strong Christian, she has continuosly reminded me that God has a plan for us and the park, and how the bad things that happen here are helping us to speed up our work to transport the spider monkeys to the new park, where they will be able to live a safer and happ¡pier life.
To that end I am now in La Paz, waiting to meet Matt and the group (he doesn´t know I´m here so hope he doesn´t read this in the next 3 hours) in order to travel down to the new land to find a location that is perfect for the first group release of spider monkeys. Very exciting.
All my love to everyone, sxx
Surprising Matt went off succesfully at the airport in Santa Cruz, and I joined the group on their travels down to the new park Jac Cuisi (´The Promised Land´) to start the project phase of their trip. Its a tough life, but this also involved cycling down death road and a night in a hotel in the cloud forest enduring these views.
After a further 15 hours on a bus to Rurrenabaque, and then a day stuck there due to rain which made the river impassable, we arrived in the new land. The group have done really well getting stuck into work building 2 puma enclosures, and I managed to get away with helping for only a day before heading off on my own project to find a location for the spider monkeys, once they eventually move fom Machía. The new land turned out to be even more stunning than I expected and we spent 6 hours walking through this terrain, in search of the perfect place. As you can imagine from the photo, we were not stuck for choice as all of it was as bautiful as this picture portrays.
