Stay TripPen Travel

Monkey Island is about a 40-minute ride from Panama City. As this was my 2^nd day, I had already secured two “personal drivers” … (I network and make associates fast)…I booked my Monkey Island Tour through     . Again, I communicated through WhatsApp (+507 6617-0928) They sent me the address and told me to tell my driver to take me to “Rampa publica de Gamboa” which means “the public ramp in Gamboa” at Gatun Lake. The ramp is a boat dock on the Panama Canal…I met my guide, Angel who spoke minimal English and he welcomed me onto a decent sized boat with shaded awning (much appreciated because the sun is fierce this time of day in Panama)…I adjusted my Samsung 23 Ultra in my gimbal and attached my Insta 360 x3 camera to my invisible Insta 360 selfie stick psyched up to get some amazing footage…about 5 minutes into the canal we came across a medium sized cruise ship, a tug boat, and what looked like an oil rig but I’m not sure…I checked my 360 camera and realized the light wasn’t green…my content isn’t recording…I reset it…it goes out again…and again…and again…I’m getting frustrated because this is a brand new camera…and I’m pissed at myself because I should have read the manual more thoroughly…if my cousin Vince was here, he would tell me that Proper Preparation Prevents Piss-Poor Performance…I don’t need to hear that right now…I need this camera to work…the voice in my head asks me if Spike Lee, Tyler Perry, or James Cameron have to deal with this dumb shit…eventually I tell myself to work with what’s working…so I focus on filming the rest of the trip through my Samsung phone…the first island that we come to is inhabited by the Panamanian Tamarin …currently being visited by another tour boat…after they pull away…we move closer to pull up to the shore…Angel says a few things in broken in English and the rest in Spanish…I interpret some of the Spanish and understand that the monkeys will come to the boat and Angel will give me fruit to feed them…the things that I didn’t understand I just responded “si”…I do this by default when someone asks me a question in Spanish that I don’t understand…they literally could be asking me if would give them my first-child and I would tell them “si”…an appropriate response would be “no entiendo”…nevertheless, we approach the shore…this particular island is inhabited by a species called referred to as the Panamanian White-faced capuchin…clearly unafraid and accustomed to visitors the monkeys await and jump onto the boat ready to receive that portion of papaya slices…Angel is still at the back of the boat and has not given me the fruit yet…I watch as a couple of the monkeys walk along the side rails…one of them approaches me as I’m searching the trees for signs of other monkeys…particularly one monkey who is twice the size as the rest and clearly the alpha due to the way that all of the other capuchin distance themselves from him…there is also a female monkey carrying her child on her back hoping to get a serving for herself and her child…the alpha is bullying her which kinda pisses me off…then I feel a set of little hands wrap around my arm and a set of little teeth bite my tricep…I jump up and the capuchin hurries off…I guess he was thinking that I should have had food to give him by now…Angel seems to think nothing of it…I check my tricep…no broken skin…I take Amoxicillin with me on all my trips for situations just like this…eventually, Angel gives me a Tupperware bowl full of papaya and I distribute pieces to the capuchin on the boat and the ones in the trees and on the shore…we move along to the next occupied island passing by caiman (alligators and crocodiles do not live in Panama) and iguanas…as my eyes searched the canopy I couldn’t locate any signs of wildlife, save a few native birds…Angel informed me that this island was home to the Mantled Howler monkey, a species of primate considered to be “A New World monkey”…I had to look that one up. Apparently, New World Monkeys are part of the 5 different families of primate (mammals w/ hands and flexible feet) native to Central America, South America, and Mexico…Angel began to make some kind of call and revved the engine of the boat and sure enough we heard a “howl”…the monkey still didn’t come out of hiding so we rode around to another side of the island and found him sitting in a tree…fortunately this one didn’t get on the boat…he simply sat in the tree eating foliage…black hair and protruding mouth…he looked like a miniature Silver Backed gorilla…we sat and watched him for a moment and proceeded to the next destination…The Geoffroy’s tamarin was even more difficult to spot….standing maybe 8 inches in height and weighing about 17 ounces as a mature adult…the tamarin, white and brown haired with a little black streak he tight-roped down a vine…Angel gave me some more papaya and told me to place it on the bow of the boat…I took that to mean don’t feed this guy out of the palm of your hand…he might be cute in size but he can probably whip my ass…I took heed and placed the fruit on the bow…the tamarin came down and ate chomped on the papaya in front of me…he wasn’t the most attractive faced monkey in the jungle…he reminded me of Panthro from the He-Man cartoon with small piercing teeth…after eating the papaya he climbed back up the vine and onto a branch then kindly posed for a few pics for me…we then made our way back to shore…it had been a long hot tour but well worth the sweat and frustration…I contacted my driver and then pulled out my DJI Air 2s drone to get a few aerials while I waited on my ride…got some good footage and even met a couple of gentlemen who were filming for a television station in Spain called Telemadrid…they told me they travel the world and spend the day interviewing natives of Spaniards who live abroad…pretty dope job!