Rainforest Walk

Our Panama Canal transit date is set for Saturday, May 14. We are going through with 2 other smaller yachts. Our main worry now is finding 4 line handlers for our yacht to help us with the ropes in the loch. It's an overnight crossing and I will need to feed the crew and find somewhere nice for them to sleep and provide a lot of beer no doubt as well. We also need to provision for 5 months and that's going to be a big shopping expedition on Thursday. The Shelter Bay Marina where we have been staying since Tuesday is a great place to wait. We spend the mornings and afternoons taking rainforest walks in search of different creatures and birds. The photos aren't great due to the low light and because of the dense forest you can't get very close to the subjects. You can just make out a Toucan in one photo. Interestingly they sound like frogs high up in the trees. The Howler monkey was a big male and he was howling as I took this photo. Ian was jumping up and down on the ground trying to get it's attention but I don't think it was very amused by him. The birds soaring over the trees are some kind of vultures that eat monkeys. We saw the Capuchin monkeys on our walks as well. They have the big white faces and are highly intelligent. Organ grinders used them to collect money from customers in the past. The ones we saw were very cheeky and deliberately breaking off branches over our heads so we had to dodge the falling debris.