Nacho the monkey

One day, we had the chance to visit one of the indigenous communities along the river. We weren't expecting natives to come out to meet us with spears and loincloths, because we knew that modernization had pretty much affected the whole region, for both good and bad. But it was pretty cool to see that they had kept a lot of their traditional ways, mostly because they were what worked best to survive in the jungle. They still hunted  with spearguns, still planted and harvested the same crops as they had for centuries, still went to the local medicine man and still had pet monkeys. This monkey's name was Nacho, and he was a handful. For some reason, he was just like any other Ecuadorian, with an almost religious fascination with Bentz and his blond hair. He couldn't leave Bentz alone. 



















He would pretty much climb all over everyone, and when you least expected it. The villagers told us that his mother had died and the little monkey was abandoned. Either that or they had killed the mother and the baby was abandoned - the story was a little confusing.
















You always read about how the monkey tail is an amazingly strong and useful appendage. You can't really grasp that concept until you have a monkey tail wrapped around your arm. It is crazy strong and kind of weird, like an arm without any fingers.
















The monkey also loved Amy, and spent the afternoon crawling all over her. I think it was fun in the beginning, but kind of wore on her after a while. Probably had something to do with the cleanliness of the monkey. You could literally see the bugs crawling around on that fleabag.