Who's tracking who? (posting from the road)

Electing to maximize our experiences in the remote corner of Rwanda home to the mountain gorilla, 4 of us set out in search of another endangered primate - the Golden Monkey. A subspecies of the Blue Monkey, the Golden Monkey resides only in the Parc National des Volcans and the only opportunity to see them is with the support of a full trekking group.

Similar to the gorilla, the monkeys are left to their own devices at night and trackers resume the search in the early morning. Once their position has been ascertained it is communicated to a team of researchers and the guides with walkie-talkies. So we set off again; guides, porters, armed guards and us. This time we were traipsing through a bamboo forest, much easier than the vine covered areas the gorillas had frequented, in search of small monkeys.

Unlike the more popular gorillas, the golden monkeys are still somewhat of a mystery to the outside world. There are two troops in the park that have been habituated and they are utilized for both research and tourism. The regulations surrounding the monkeys is not as strict as the gorillas with the exception of the time limit...still followed to the second. Patience, my gorilla guide, switched and was able to lead me again - this is good because he is familiar and fantastic but he is an absolute bear about the time.

Once we reached the monkeys staging area (an open field near the troop), the researchers came away from the monkeys and we dropped our bags and made our way to them armed with only a camera. Then the rain started. No surprise really, the lush green needs to come from somewhere but trying to take photos of small, high in the tree primates in humid and now
precipitous conditions proved to be too much for poor Canon camera. The lens fogged up as if to say..."leave me alone, I need a day off from your paparazzi style vacation".

So I did something I rarely ever do...I sat and enjoyed the monkeys WITHOUT photographing them constantly. It was liberating just to sit and watch the monkeys at play. After our time was up, we made our way back to the staging area to retrieve our gear and then a very unusual thing happened. The monkeys appeared. It seems they were curious about us...the tracked us!

Patience had a small coronary that morning with all the extra time that we spent with the monkeys but because the rain had finally stopped it gave me the opportunity to snap a few pictures to share with you all...enjoy...