Glaser's Grenada Life: MONKEYS!!!

This blog should be pretty self explanatory with the title and the photo to the left. The greatly anticipated trip has finally occurred, we saw the infamous Mona Monkeys of the Grand Etang Forest Reserve (rain forest). I figured I'd just throw up a monkey photo right off the bat so there's a chance you'll have enough patience to read the words in between the photos. ;)
I'll start from the very beginning, unlike in the U.S. if you want to see something such as a wild monkey, or to go tubing down a river, or perhaps to see the seven sister falls you simply ask a taxi. There is no need to hire a guide or an outrigger company, it's a small country and all the locals know their way around very well. Even with all the adventures to do here an adventure company would be struggling to succeed. So with this in mind I got the number of the most trusted, sane, and slow taxi driver I know of, Dexter. I don't have a clue what his last name is, I don't think anyone knows, yet most the students know about him. Knowing that this trip would take us to some of the highest peaks and windy roads in this crazy little island I wanted someone at least partially sane behind the wheel and most taxi drivers i have seen so far, and ALL the buss drivers are completely nuts. Dexter quoted $190 EC, bring as many people as you like and split the cost. "Clown Car-ing It" as I'll call it, is VERY common here. For example, it's quite normal to fit 19 adults in a standard size early 90s minivan... So this worked out to be somewhere around 20 US dollars per person, not bad for a two hour journey and a sane driver.
Off we went zooming up the windy road, Dexter doing his best to find some road in between the pot holes. About 15 minutes into the journey we stopped at a nice look out point where we could see the city of St. George's below us and down to Grand Anse where we live. We were shocked to feel the temperature in the 70s, we were all quite COLD! We were warned that at night it gets even COLDER the LOW 70s, and MISTY... holy crap! Time to break out the winter coats!!!
After this chilling experience we all happily hopped back into the van and were at the Monkey spotting location in about 5 minutes. This area was basically a small dirt parking lot with a wooden railing/fence around it. On the other side was the rain forest. When we first looked around we were told a bus load of people had just been here and four monkeys were out and now very well fed. We were bummed. Dexter was kind enough to bring a couple bananas along (i couldn't buy any, it's a long story for some other time). As he went to the car i heard some rustling in the trees and a long black tail sticking up through the leaves...

See him in the left third of the photo? Then the bananas came out of the bag...

This is a very happy Mona Monkey!

(above) they were happy to sit around knowing there were likely more bananas on the way...

Nothing like a nice mid-bite banana shot ...

(above) they had no hesitation in jumping up onto Dexter to get to that banana quicker!

"One tourist in the shop... how many bananas coming out? hmm..."

Note how they hold the banana with their feet as they peel it with their teeth and hands. They can peel a banana VERY quickly.

Ashley gets a quick pet in. They tolerate it as long as they have food, but they always turn their backs on you and never look you in the eyes, interesting. They especially did not like the camera lens, i think it looked like a big Eye to them.