Spanish Word – Mono

Above: Lucy riding with our buddy Pratt checking out some friendly monos in Manuel Antonio National Park.

A couple weeks ago, while we were at the beach, we met tons of monkeys (monos). Now Lucy has always loved monkeys the zoo, on TV, or in books, but we weren’t sure how she was going to react to monkeys in the wild. Turns out she had a mixed response.

The good: We saw a cute little squirrel monkey outside our room the first day to whet her appetite. Then over the next few days we encountered many traveling packs of white-faced monkeys both on the beach and up on the hill where we were staying. They were friendly and active and Lucy loved them. We sat out on our porch for almost half an hour watching 20 monkeys move through the trees below us, and the next day we got face-to-face with some on the beach (pictured above).

The bad: The third type of monkey we saw was the howler monkey. These guys are HUGE, as big as a big dog, and move slowly but loudly through the trees. They are intimidating and unleash some very loud roars that scared Lucy.

The ugly: On our last morning at the beach, the howler monkeys set up shop outside our room around 4 AM and started going to work. We found out later the the howlers are the loudest of the land animals and their howl can carry up to 3 miles. We of course were woken up terrified, and Lucy work up in abject fear that her short life was drawing to a quick end. She got in bed with us and somehow managed to sleep with us the rest of the morning.

Our monkey experience was fun, but Lucy will no longer think of cute little Curious George when someone mentions mono in her presence.