30 Ecuador Stories, Part V: Monkeys, More Monkeys, and a Dog
In the midst of all these exploits, I keep sensing a Chris-shaped hole beside me—where he should be, would be, if he hadn’t died. But of course if he hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have brought Jeanne and Mitchell to visit Madeleine in South America. Therefore, any attempt to envision him here, splashing paddles into the Pastaza or getting shat on by horses, is an exercise in futility, and a painful one at that. But I envision him. I’m human. I ask what he might have done differently, whether he would have marched us off in some opposite direction, ushered us into yet more churches or devised some other death-defying escapades sold on the street by tiny ladies.
There’s no answer, and how could there be? These are our experiences, not his. And at a certain point in the midst of them—somewhere between the rafting and the riding—I stopped thinking quite so much about the Chris-shaped cut-out and started feeling, at long last, transformed. Just a little bit. Just enough to believe that I can lead; that I can travel and traipse without him; that my kids and I can indeed have our slam-bang adventures without him, be it here amid the staggering beauties of Ecuador or anywhere else on the globe. We can keep living and racking up stories, I’m sure of that now. I’m doubly sure that he wants us to.
But I can’t blame him for the monkeys.
Now, some people find them cute. Others find them disturbing and scary. I had always found them cute, and part of me (the stubborn, childish, idealistic part) still does, but after this trip’s lesson in simian-related F.S.O. I also find them enormously disturbing and extremely scary. They are unpredictable, fast-moving, thieving little buggers.
This we learn during our stay in Puyo, a gritty jungle town about an hour from Baños. If you have only a day and a half left to visit the Amazon basin, Puyo’s your best bet, and the drive south is—what’s that word again?—breathtaking. More mountains. More clouds. More waterfalls: at the taxi driver’s suggestion, we stop and hike up to the thundering Paílón del Diablo (Hair of the Devil), whose elemental force reminds me of Angel Falls at Niagara.
Once in Puyo, we take a cab to a jungle nature preserve where a guide takes us around and explains for us some of the endangered, exquisitely beautiful Amazonian flora. He hands us cinnamon leaves to chew. To the kids he hands a lip-shaped blossom; they pop it in their mouths and pose coyly for photos. On our return to the hotel, Madeleine asks the receptionist about fun things to do the next day. The advice comes back: Go see the monkeys in the jungle at the edge of town. Monkeys! Cool! Monkeys are soooo cute! Monkeys are fun! Yeah, all right, we’re in the Amazon, baby! Monkeys!
So the next morning we take a cab to the Paseo de los Monos, a monkey rescue staffed by tall young Germans in khaki. A sign warns us to hang onto our stuff for dear life, because, for our information, monkeys are unpredictable, fast-moving, thieving little buggers. The sick, injured, and dangerous monkeys are all in cages, but the rest of them are not. They gambol around the grounds, perfectly at ease in the presence of humans. Some of them are wild monkeys who drop in for a bit of schmoozing at the primate happy hour and then return to their digs in the jungle.
We are all delighted. We are all charmed. Except for Jeanne, who is already among the group of people who find monkeys disturbing and scary. (Why I decided to exacerbate her fears with a visit to monkey headquarters mystifies me, now. Bad mom.) I am especially delighted and charmed when a curious Woolly monkey takes an interest in me and comes up close.
Mom: Look at that! He’s so cute!
Mitchell: He’s so cute!
Madeleine: He’s so cute!
Jeanne: I hate monkeys.
Then the curious Woolly monkey comes up closer. Quickly. Straight to my feet. He grabs onto the bottom of my crop pants. Isn’t he sweet.
Mom: Look at that! He’s so cute!
Mitchell: He’s so cute!
Madeleine: He’s so cute!
Jeanne: I hate monkeys.
Then he climbs up my thigh. Then he climbs onto my back. Then he climbs onto my shoulder, hops onto my backpack and starts applying himself—with considerable speed and admirable monkey-industry—to the zippers. It appears the thieving little bugger is hell-bent on raiding my pack.
Mom: Ahhh! Get off me! Get off me!!
Mitchell: Ahhhh!
Madeleine: Ahhhh!
Jeanne: I hate monkeys.
Somehow, I shake him off. One of the tall young Germans materializes beside me with an undisguised look of disdain. “We tell everyone to leave their bags in the car,” he says. Why, thank you for that helpful and timely piece of information, Herr Professor Doktor. Out loud I say: We took a cab. The tall young German shrugs in reply. I tighten the straps on my backpack, and the kids and I head down toward the river. A monkey begins to circle Madeleine, who quickly removes the cross from her neck and shoves it in her pocket.
Like everything else in Ecuador, this is all spectacularly beautiful. Cicadas chatter. A zillion types of palm trees soar and sway. A small, squat mammal with a long striped snout follows us around—it looks like a cross between an aardvark and a mole. And look over there! Another curious monkey! What a lovely surprise! This one is smaller, skinnier, light brown. A capuchin, I think. He approaches with a gleam in his eye, the thieving little bugger. And runs straight at me.
No way, monkey boy. This means war.
Immediately he mounts my leg and starts to climb. But I’m tougher than he is. I’m faster. I’m a tired but determined old lady, and I’ve learned my lesson from Monkey 1. I will go in with my superior something-or-other (uhh, size? intellect? sense of foreboding?) and strike without mercy. In other words, I will once more scream: AHHHHHHHHHH, GET OFF ME, MONKEY, AHHHHHHHHHHH! I will then shake him off at the knee and backtrack quickly, and he will skitter away into the jungle, demoralized and defeated.
The kids and I check out the river for a little longer, then visit the sick and injured monkeys while the big-nosed Aard-mole-thing follows us around. When we decide we’ve seen enough, one of the tall young Germans calls us a cab, and we head back to Puyo, where we suck down batidos (delicious fruity milkshakes) and pack up our stuff for the eight-hour drive through the mountains to Guayaquil for our flights home.
This was one piece of S I needed help in F’ing O: Who would take us over the Andes. Thank goodness for my old friend Jim (the one I exploited that first night I flirted with Chris), who knows Ecuador well and has secured a man named Washington after a couple of other drivers fell through. We’re sitting in the lobby waiting for him, snacking on blob-shaped pastries and bored out of our heads, when the last blast of shit hurls forthwith in my direction. Fittingly, this occurs when I get up and head for the bathroom.
That’s when it appears: a big, barking German Shepherd. Apparently he’s been locked in a back room. Apparently someone let him out by accident. Apparently he sees me, smells me, senses me on some visceral canine level, and apparently he hates my guts. Or at least he hates my right thigh, because he bounds straight for my leg and chomps down, hard. A rough translation of my response:
AYYYYYYAAAARRRRRGHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWW!!!
A rough translation of the children’s response: MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM MM!!!
Still screaming, I bolt into the bathroom and yank down my pants, examining the damage: long, bleeding scrapes and teeth marks, but no obvious puncture wounds that I can see. The fangs didn’t cut through my pants. Nevertheless, I bleat for a few seconds in pain and abject fear (something more along the lines of WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHEEEEEEOOOOOH) while picturing myself being medivac’d out of Puyo for a rabies shot to the belly. Then I squirt Bacitracin all over the wound and cover it with band-aids. As I do, Madeleine and Jeanne blast into the ladies room, terrified.
Madeleine: I told them to call an ambulance! You could have rabies!
Mom: This isn’t happening! This isn’t happening!
Jeanne: You have rabies?!?!! Mom! Noooo!
Mom (calming down, sort of): Look, maybe the dog was vaccinated. And there aren’t any puncture wounds. So maybe saliva didn’t get through.
Madeleine: But maybe it did! And we don’t know if it’s vaccinated! We can’t take that chance! THEY’RE CALLING AN AMBULANCE!!
In truth, they are not calling an ambulance. This has been deemed a non-emergency by the owner (of the hotel, and of the dog), who dispassionately enters the ladies room with a cigarette and begins to speak as though it’s THE most normal thing in the world for her dog to attack hotel guests in the thigh. There I stand with my pants around my knees, shaking. And there she stands, a thin, blonde, 70ish woman with excellent English, telling me “It’s OK, he’s a good dog” between leisurely drags on her cigarette. She says it again: “He’s a good dog.”
To which I would very much like to respond, in either English or Spanish: HE’S A GOOD DOG, HUH? THEN WHY THE FUCK DID HE BITE ME IN THE LEG? But I don’t say that. Instead I say, with a baffled shake of the head: …¿Porque?… Why? Why did this happen? Why should your darling German Shepherd suddenly feel compelled to snack on my quads? To this she says nothing. Instead she takes another drag on her cig and—a thousand blessings on her tobacco-addicted head—pulls out a vaccination card that clearly, definitively, officially indicates that Fido or Fluffy or Vicious Demon Puppy is up to date with all of his shots, rabies included.
Phew!! I’m feeling reassured. The kids are not. They worry that I’ll be among the 100 percent of those exposed to rabies who do nothing about it and thus die a slow, horrible death. I tell them no, that won’t happen, the dog was vaccinated. For the next day or two, I repeat this mantra over and over and over again: THE DOG WAS VACCINATED. THE DOG WAS VACCINATED. Say it with me! THE DOG WAS VACCINATED.
I’m actually pretty darn lucky, I tell them: After all the strays we’ve seen in Ecuador, I somehow manage to get bitten by a vaccinated pet. Think about it! It’s like winning the lottery! I’m also lucky I’m wearing crop pants that go down to my calf; I’m lucky I lost that really nice pair of shorts I bought several days ago in Portoviejo, because I certainly would have worn them on our last day in Puyo, and I certainly would have wound up with a much more serious injury.
As I say this, I reflect on the crop pants I’m wearing. Ah, yes, I wore them to the monkey refuge earlier in the day. Ah, yes, I’ll bet I stink of those thieving little buggers: No wonder the German Shepherd attacked me. Here I mention, not quite in passing, that this is the second time in three months I’ve been bitten by a dog. The last one ran right up to me on the sidewalk and snapped me in the keister; later, I heard from a knowledgeable source that the dog had been “exhibiting herding instincts recently.” So when I don’t smell like monkey, I smell like. . . cow? That, or I possess some irresistible animal attraction, although it seems to work exclusively on small, disturbed primates and mentally disordered household pets.
On the long drive back—through the night, over the Andes, penetrating a dense fog that puts visibility at about two feet—Washington, our driver, asks about Chris. Between his broken English and my broken Spanish, we haltingly discuss the vanished man in my life, his illness, his death, my experiences with the children since. I am not sure what prompts Washington to ask, what sets him apart from his countrymen, until he begins to speak of his divorce and his own children. There’s a new woman in his life, he says, but nothing matters more to him than the kids.
The conversation doesn’t last long, maybe five or ten minutes. But it touches me deeply. My three beauties, asleep in the back, are my entirety. They fill this new world of mine. Their intrepid course through life will carry them past mountain and river and sea, on horses and rafts, through sunshine and clouds. Sometimes I’ll be with them. Sometimes I won’t. Either way, they own my heart.
And we’re a family, still.