Monkey Island

There is an island here in the middle of a river, about 1.5 hrs drive from the city. This island is inhabited by about 200 chimps who used to be lab animals at research insitututes. The pressure from advocacy groups to stop experiments on chimps, coupled with a lack of funding, has resulted in closings of such institutions and thus, in a need to find a home for all these primates who could not survive on their own in the wild given their instincts have been dulled a great deal or altogether lost as a consequence of being used to measure the effectiveness of the newest hepatitus vaccine and other fun activities. In any case, these lucky 200 got moved to this island to spend the rest of their lives in peace and quiet. They are fed every dady and you can take a boat out to supplement their diet by throwing bananas which they will greatfully accept and devour. Of course, one cannot actually disembark on the island of the island as the animals may get aggressive, but the boat will get fairly close to them without touching the shore. Apparently, the signs of aggression are a positive development as this means they're becoming more accustomed to living on their own and choosing an alpha male (I'm sure it was a very democratic process) to be their leader and look especially threatening if humans try to get too close. This rather large chimp comes forward and proceeds rocking from side to side, making loud noises and clapping his hands.

After the monkey island visit, we procceeded to a beautiful ocean beach where we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and bbqing. I found a hermit crab who was strangely not amused by being picked up and used as a photo prop and who ended up puncturing my finger with his very sharp claws. Ouch. I guess I'll have to settle for people or nonhazardous fauna in capturing my memories on film.