Puerto Lindo, Panama.

We drop of the lads and go and have a beer in the local restaurant, which is so cheap. 75 cents for a bottle of beer, how good is that. Even better the owner Hans and his wife have a Toucan called ‘Toucey’. It is amazing and so tame it’s unbelievable. It basically is free to fly off in the rainforest whenever it likes as the cage is open, but it chooses to stay in the restaurant most of the time, where he is feed fruit and rice. He is wicked!! But a bit of a piece of work and like to peck on your hand, twisting his mouth with all his strength – but it does not hurt whatsoever.





We chilled out for a few days there and went to go and register with Hostel Wunderbar. Within a couple of days Silvia had found us some backpackers to come back to Columbia with. We had 5 in all, one couple called Bart and Mary Ann from Holland and a Canadian women called Steph and her to children called Ariel and Jordon.
We had a couple of days to chill out and get the boat ready before our departure date so mistakably we went to go and visit the uninhabited island of Monkey Island



Attack of the monkeys…

I don’t know what it is with animals lately but they seem not to like us very much. Anyway Sym persuaded me to come to visit this island of Monkeys, so we took a bag of cornflakes with us so we could feed them. Sym filled my mind with false images of little monkeys sitting on my shoulder (like baboo off Aladdin) was how he described them ...............................

Well we tie the dingy up to the dock and go onto the island, within two minutes we had three monkeys swing down from the tree( full teeth / LARGE teeth showing) hissing at us. One monkey comes up from behind me and he comes to my shoulders in height!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!





I crapped myself to say the least, they looked so bloody aggressive… baboo my ass!!

I backed off slowly edging myself back towards the safety of my dingy. Sym on the other hand thought he was well hard and at one with nature and told me to chick over the food, he then kneels down and starts to feed them (I actually just got goose bumps when writing this remembering how frightened I was). Then the monkeys gather round closely and trying to grab the bag of him, showing them their teeth and waving their arms at him. Sym chucks the bag and within a couple of seconds he has two monkeys dangling off his arms biting into him. JESUS CHRIST… all I heard was Sym screaming and then he starting to make monkey noises back at them! He shouted to me to run, but I don’t think he needed to…I was already legging it as fast as I could…I jumped a mage distance. Something I did not think I was capable of (way over 15 ft) and landed into the dingy with such sheer force I had friction burns up all my arms and legs! Sym makes it in just after me and the bloody vicious monkeys had bitten his thumb down to the bone.

Picture of them starting to get a bit heavy!!!





Biten to the bone!!



We were quite worried, of course not knowing what diseases there were carrying and so we went to find a doctor. Bearing in mind we were in the middle of no where. Hans told us there a type – of nurse (not sure what qualifications that would entail) in the local village. He was drunk as it was Sunday and apparently everyone gets drunk of a Sunday! Anyway we were very grateful to here that the monkeys did not have any infectious diseases like Rabies and he gave Sym a jab – free of charge, can you believe that!

Anyway, I would highly recommend no one visits that island ever again