Hey Hey we're the monkeys!

Every afternoon once I've locked up the beast and left him to enjoy his kilo of steak I like to go to my favourite place at Inti, the monkey park. Here two tribes of semi tame and tame monkeys live, the Capuchins and Spider monkeys. They are really so much fun, the Capuchins are small brown critters who are super intelligent and quite naughty. Often when I walk through the park in the morning they will jump up on me and then try and mug me, tiny hands fiddling with my backpack lock, dipping into my pockets, little hands unzipping and unbuttoning as they go. In fact they are so good at it most days some tourists loses their glasses, cigarettes and the other morning one monkey nicked someones alka seltzer tablets and then sat in a tree eating them...one monkey has to live far away from the rest of the park cause he was trained as a professional thief stealing things from tourists, when he lived in the park he used to pick all the locks on the cages of the birds and other monkeys.

The Spider monkeys are the weirdest things I have ever seen, they are quite large standing to about my hip height, covered in black furry hair, they have looooong arms and legs, strange long four fingered hands and what look like double jointed wrists. Top this off with little beer bellies and a tendency to walk upright on their back legs flapping their big hands about and you have one of the funniest looking sights ever. They are very friendly and will often hold hands with you using their tail as an extra hand curling it about an arm or a wrist.

But it's not all fun and games in the monkey world, they really remind me of nasty schoolchildren, theirs is a real hierachy and quite a lot of bullying goes on. The head monkey of the Capuchins is called "Jefe" which means "boss" in Spanish, he is huge and fat and has a gang of equally big fat evil henchmen who carry out all his dirty work. If you are small, slightly wimpy you won't last long. It is sad watching the little monkeys quiver and eat food off the ground while the Jefe and his evil friends take the food tables. And do they get hysterical, little Daniella is quite the drama queen and sits on the ground shrieking, baring her teeth, raising her eyebrows, hand over the mouth, other hand and tail wrapped around her body until the big ones take their leave from the table.

But the monkeys can be awful to people and other animals too, a gang of wild monkeys have been stealing things from peoples bags, bit one of the girls who was with a puma and even worse the same gang has worked out that they can steal birds from the aviary. They just jump down, wrench open the door and grab a parrot. Yesterday it happened and the monkey then sat in a tree branch above the volunteers ripping the poor parrot apart and eating it while showering the people below in rainbow coloured feathers. It was as the Spanish girl that works there said "orrible".