Great Friends Are Great When It’s Convenient

On the second night of our stay in the delta things finally started getting a little dirty. Up to now, every campsite that we stayed in had great showers and facilities. I suspect that some of the people on the trip showered more on the camping trip than they did back home. There’s something inauthentic about being so clean while camping and when we discovered that this campsite didn’t have running water I secretly cheered. When we discovered that this campsite was infested with monkeys, I secretly cheered. Monkeys are incredible at making people do silly things and these monkeys were no exception. They were clearly trained by some monkey mastermind. They had the nerve and speed to swoop in while Daniela was chopping veggies and swipe a banana off the table. The best way to get rid of monkeys is to capture one, paint it completely white, and release it back into the pack. The other monkeys in the area will go nuts and run away from the white monkey. We tried to capture a monkey by luring it onto the table with food and then lassoing it but they were too quick. The next best way to get rid of monkeys is to acknowledge that you are powerless in their presence and to roll over and let them steal all your food and your socks. Monkeys love socks. This is the approach that we took. They rewarded our tolerance by peeing all over Karina’s tent.

Back to the showering issue. I actually hadn’t showered in a couple of days and I knew I couldn’t go one more day without tidying up. The only solution was to walk down to the river with a bucket and improvise. Alejandro and Mariano were in the same boat so we all walked down together. For whatever reason I thought it would be funny to video them while they bathed. It actually ended up being really funny, especially when I panned across the river and saw a hippo peeking its head out of the water about 30 yards away. This video will be forthcoming on facebook. They showed great strength in front of the hippo and simply pretended it wasn’t there. When it was my turn to bathe they did what any good friends would do and they ran off back to the campsite and left me to clean and fight off the hippo by myself.

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