Where do the Monkey´s Sleep?

We left Tena on Thursday to head to Misahualli, a small town on the edge of two joining rivers, which head on to join the Amazon river. Misahualli is small and feels kind of sleepy and nice. The town is centered around a main plaza where most of the hotels and restaraunts are situated. The plaza is also home to a very mischevious and fearless band of monkeys. There is a sign in the plaza that reads ¨Careful, the Monkeys are a part of Life,¨ and they are. The monkeys hang out at the beach along the river during the day, playing in the trees and getting into the action along the riverfront, begging and stealing all the food and sodas (they love soda, and can drink it like a person) that they can. In the evening when the action shifts to the square so do the monkeys. You can walk around with bottle of water in your hand and suddenly feel a tug on it, looking down you´ll find a monkey with a look on his face like ¨You don´t need that do you?¨ Anyway, we had a lot of fun watching the monkeys, play with each other, people, and the village dogs. We just couldn´t figure out where they slept, at night they all just seemed to dissapear out of the square.

Thursday, our first night in Misahualli we stayed in a very nice jungle lodge (a.k.a. resort) with private cabins, a pool, and trails to a waterfall you could swim in. It was across the river from town and you had to take a canoe to get there or back. We swam in their waterfall and slid down the rocks into the river, and I almost fed their Parrot some beer (He definitely wanted some, but I decided I didn´t want to drink after a parrot and he wasn´t getting the whole thing).

Friday morning we woke up and swam laps in the pool (Dad), and had our complimentary breakfast. After that we went into town and got a nice cheap room on the square. We had seen people tubing down the river so we decided to figure what the word for innertube was in spanish and to rent some to float down the river on. I actually negotiated this feat (I have to admit Katy does a lot of our communicating), I got directions to Carlos´house (Carlos is apparently the local renter of tubes ¨bollas in espanol¨. Found his house, met Carlos and got innertubes. After that we hired a canoe guy to take us up the river so we could float back down.

Tubing down a huge South American River (Rio Napo) that NOBODY else is on, except the two people panning for gold on the bank and stopping on little beaches to lay in the sun or the little streams running into the river, is a damn fine day. One of the best ever maybe. I did fall out of my tube in some particularly fast water, and Katy did think I had maybe drowned, luckily I only swallowd about a litre of river water, the effects of which remain to be seen.

That night we had our question answered, the monkeys sleep on the roof of the Hostal Shaw, right on top of our room, and they don´t sleep much past 3AM. Today we spent on the bus going back west and south and up to the town of Banos, which is gorgeous. Its next to a huge river that rushes along the bottom of a big canyon with steep mountains on either side. They have little farms going right up the slopes.

I´ll post some pictures tommorow. The computer here isn´t cooperating with our camera.