Back to the Green Group...Site

After spending nearly 2 months with the Barbary Gang and the macaques of the Tourist Group, today it was my day to, finally, deserve my title. As I said, (or maybe not), the English is the Shit master (ok, Faeces&Urine Master), the French is the Photogrammetry master and the S. Carolinian is the Behaviour Master...and I'm the f&%cking Green Group master! Yeah! A pocket-size girl prepared for collecting data on behaviour, photogrammetry and collecting urine, faeces and whatever necessary. Let's hit it!

So, a new master student, the Londoner (to don’t call her English2), came a couple of days ago to work with the Green Group and, it was my commitment to go with her to help her to identify the monkeys and to get to know the home range.

Today, the Boss dropped us at the parking after a short drive through the road that crosses the home range. We started searching for them at and area called UK, a very flat and easy one. I was so optimistic that I expected to find them there or at least quite soon, so I had my bag full with material to collect urine and faecal samples. Craso error, pequeña! ( big mistake, little one!). Of course, the macaques weren't there. We checked also Texas, the whole of it (it's a big area). Then, I started to check an area called Paralell while she checked Big valley, which is close to the other zone...but she got lost and I had to run up and down the hills coughing trying to find her. After that I tried to be more careful...I was so excited for being in the forest again that I guess that I just let myself go, hypnothized by the songs of the Great Tits and the narcissus growing among the snow remains...

During the day we walked through pretty much the whole home range (even the Amphitheatre), only leaving for tomorrow two areas known as Dutch and Newfoundland. After 9h walking we end up really tired and without finding any trace of the monkeys (well, some, but old ones). Even though, I'm glad that I didn't lose her too many times and only for short periods; given that she seems to have a natural tendency to get lost, as we saw when we came back to town, I think I didn't do it so badly. And it was great to be in the forest again, without hearing noisy tourists, just birds; and to feel your heart beating strongly and be sweating like a waterfall when trying to climb Vertical among others...

Well, even if we didn't find the monkeys, it was a good day for me. Hopefully, we will think the same after some more days of unsuccesful search, when our entire bodies start to complain. Or maybe we will find them tomorrow, "In shaa'Allah".