We Slept in a Monkey Sanctuary (backpacking in Colombia)

Good morning guys and welcome back to Puerto Nariño. We just left the cabin this morning, which was a beautiful night's sleep by the way with the rainforest around us, and then we took a boat to the Tukuna village to have a fish soup in this local little shack, which was also really, really nice. We then got the boat down the river back to Puerto Nariño, and on the way saw some more pink dolphins, some river dolphins, and it was just a really, really nice way to wake up. It's only about 9am now, and we're about to jump on another boat to head to Mocagua, where there is a monkey sanctuary. I kind of had to do a recap there with my phone because my other camera stopped working because of the humidity, but thankfully this is working now and I can show you the rest of the day. Let's do it! There goes one boat, and now we're getting on this boat. Cool, now we're onto another boat, and a slightly smaller boat to float down to Mocagua. It's like walking the plank, you have good balance. So we've just started our walk here with our local guide again, and that's what's been really good about the last few days is Sebastian, our overall guide, has arranged local guides in each of the villages, and in this one we have a local Tukuna guide to show us the monkey sanctuary. So I found out that it was started in 2015, and before that there was a lot of experimentation on monkeys here to solve a malaria vaccine as I understand it, but I mean in the end it was fruitless and they came and freed a lot of the monkeys, and also a lot of the locals traditionally used to hunt monkeys, and now instead they've turned it more into a monkey sanctuary, and then tourists can come and see the sanctuary instead of people hunting them. So that's what we're going to see, I think there's a lot of them here, we've just been told to put all our stuff away into our pockets because it is their territory, and they'll try and steal it. Found our first monkeys, looks like they're coming to say hello. Every monkey kind of has its own story, they've already rehabilitated about 800, but each of them have their own like history and story, so they kind of know them. So our guide here is just calling these monkeys over. If you look carefully, this little monkey has lost a foot, which apparently is from an eagle attack. He's following us. Whoa, there he goes. Hey bud. Wow, there's loads of them. Oh look, a little baby. Pretty well. It's very cool. One of them just climbed on Sebastian. So they have a little quarantine zone here where the monkeys first come in, I think for 15 days before they're allowed out. There's a little guy. There's another up there. The idea is that all the monkeys that come through here are rehabilitated and then sent back into the wild, and you know that's not always possible with wild animals if they've been domesticated to put them back into the wild, but that's what they're trying to do here with all the monkeys that come through. I think a lot of them he said come from captivity, being used for bad tourism purposes, or they've been attacked in some way and found and have disabilities that then they'll try to, you know, either keep them here or get them back into the wild. It's cool as well. I think if you were looking for somewhere authentic to volunteer in, then this jumps out to me because it's a real local community there. This is obviously being done very well, and I know with certain volunteering packages or places it can be a bit, I don't know, a bit dodgy. It's not always done in the right way. Sometimes it's done just to take the volunteers money, but this seems pretty legit and pretty interesting when you're working with actual monkeys. I don't know, just a side thought. So that was if you want to volunteer then you can here on there. Pause it, take it. So this sanctuary was actually founded in 2005, and it was jointly done with a decision by the local communities not to hunt them anymore, and then since then make this a place for positive tourism, funding the rehabilitation of the monkeys instead. And I like that's become a general trend in places. Like if I think of Thailand where they used to sell tours to ride elephants, and that was much more about conservation for the elephants. Then think of places in the Philippines where I've been before where fishermen used to hunt and kill the whale sharks, and now instead tourists go and see the whale sharks. I think that's it's a good trend to let people pay to come and see the conservation efforts rather than pay to exploit the animals. Just climb over him, he's like give me some. We're back in the community now, and this is a lot of room for the night. Very basic, but most things are here, and for this kind of trip I'm absolutely fine with that. We didn't have running water for a shower, and the shower's only in the outside outhouse thing, but didn't care at all because as soon as the water started working again, it was glorious. So just had our shower. It's only about 3.30 now, so we've got all afternoon just to chill here by the river, and then have dinner and stay here tonight. Okay, we found a little cabin on the river to have a beer. Hello! She definitely wants to film you being on the top of your camera. Look at this, we're just looking at our legs now, and we're covered in mozzie vibes from last night I think. Good morning again, it is 6.30am, and we're now ready to leave. We just have to go jump back on the boat towards Leticia, which is where we started this whole trip, and yeah, this has been a beautiful few days. We've also got something else to do today, so I'm going to show you that in a minute, but for now we need to go and jump on the boat. All right, we've got a little bit of a problem. I can actually see the point, because we're only getting this small boat to where our big boat's going to take us from. I can see the dock, and maybe even hear the boat. It doesn't look like we're getting that. And we're back. We've just arrived back to Leticia, and now we're going to try and pop to Brazil for lunch. It's cool to be able to say that, but yeah, we should be able to just walk across the border, because we're right on the border here with Brazil, and apparently there's no immigration. It's a free open border, so we can just walk across and go and grab lunch there. Let's see, we're approaching the border now, so let's see if we can. All right, so you see Colombia, and now Brazil, as we're walking through here. And there's also exchanges everywhere, but we're not changing our money and hoping that we can just pay on card. There's a particular restaurant I'm heading on called the Three Frontiers, or the Tres Fronteras, which is also the name of this place, because three countries meet, Peru, Brazil, and Colombia. And now, it's loud, and now we're in Brazil. I heart Brazil. Just walking down a random street, and I think this is it. Okay, yeah, cool. Nice. Just in time. Brazil, Colombia, Peru. Okay, we've got a Brazilian beer to start, apparently. Antarctica. Doesn't look very Brazilian, but apparently it is, since we're in Brazil. Saúde. Wow, and I got like my, I guess, like Piri Piri chicken. That looks amazing. And ceviche. Okay, finished a really good lunch, very full, and now we're going to stay here for a couple of hours and have probably a Brazilian, a Peruvian, and a Colombian beer. But I don't know, would you count this? I felt like I counted Peru, because we were there all day, but would you count ticking off Brazil as a country, just if you're only here for like two hours and a lunch? I'm not sure. Let me know. Do you think it counts or not? I don't know. But still, either way, I have technically been to Brazil, but I don't know. I still have to come back properly for this to really count as having been to the country, I think. Actually, we couldn't pay with card, but we could pay with Colombian pesos. So I think, like, normally you probably should exchange on the border, but they didn't mind us paying with Colombian money. And now, by the way, obviously I'm filming this on my phone. The quality's changed because all my cameras have run out of battery since we barely had electricity for the last couple of days. But now, back to Colombia and then back to Medellín. Okay, a quick tuk-tuk back across the border and we're back in Letizia. We've still got a couple of hours till the flight, so I don't know what we're going to do, but we're just waiting around until we can fly. Rocking man! Anyway, it's kind of weird. Look at this massive airport. Birds up there and nothing in, so everything is closed. There's no cash machine and we have no cash, so we're just going to sit here for a couple of hours. Yeah, it's huge and new, obviously ready for tourism to come, but there's nothing really in it here. All the shops are empty. I think this airport is broken.