Zanajura Animal Sanctuary

Picture deep Amazonian jungle.  Not a sole for miles.  Covert expeditions into the jungle tracking poachers and animal traffickers.   Learning to live off the land.  No electricity, gas or hot water.

Centro Ecologico Zanjarajuno, where Marc and I volunteered for two weeks was nothing like this.  We were in the Amazon but more on the outskirts, about 30 minutes by car (or one and a half hours by bus) from the nearest town of Puyo.  A road, or more a pothole ridden, rock covered path, takes you from Puyo on a round journey through some of the local villages and houses.  Zanjarajuno is one of them.

The house where we stayed for two weeks

We had a lovely room, with the requisite mosquito nets, in the two-story house which we were to share with three Dutch students and an Englishman (as well as various other creatures which I will get in to shortly).  The house had electricity, gas and water so was really quite comfortable.

On our first day we met Molly, an eight month old Woolly Monkey.  She was attached to one of the Dutch volunteers, Rogier and was quite content to cling to him as he wandered about.  Martje, one of the other Dutch volunteers gave us a tour of the rest of the centre.  The centre is spread across two areas, one side being where we were staying and the other was across the road up a slight hill which was more private and away from the road.

Molly out the front of the house with one of the birds who lived on the balcony.

Including Molly, we learnt that the centre currently held 5 black agoutis including a little baby agouti, an agouti paca called Amelia, a tayra (part of the weasel family) called Anastasia, a collared peccary, parrots and macaws, turtles and tortoises, two spectacled caimans, a boa constrictor which lived in a terrarium in the house and a rooster who followed us around like a dog.  The people who ran the centre had three cats of their own, a black dog named Coco and a small puppy named Oso (or bear).  The centre was also regularly visited by a large family of squirrel monkeys (cute on the outside but greedy thieving evil jerks on the inside) and a smaller family of saddleback tamarinds (who were delightful but due to their size were often bullied by the evil squirrel monkeys).  

Two of the black agoutis.  They would come to the front of their enclosure at feeding time but they weren't the most sociable.

Anastasia being hand fed by Marc

Amelia the Paca

Patrizio - lots of attitude

But was a big softie when it came to getting a pat

Rooster

The tortoises sunbathing

The turtles - it looks like they are about to have sex but the one at the back is actually clambering over the other one to get to food.

Sometimes they would sneak inside the house for lunch

The two parrots who lived on the front balcony.  They often had to fight Molly for their banana and maize

Squirrel monkeys looking all cute before they gouge your eyes out looking for banana.

Saddleback tamarinds getting in on the banana action

Fish, Molly, Marc and Oso

Coco, Martje and Oso

Leaf cutter ants

After meeting all the animals we then took ourselves off to the river for a swim, we being myself, Marc and his new best man friend Fish (Barry Fisher if you wish to be formal).  The river was beautiful and the water was so clean.  There were some lovely places to relax and like the good house husband he is, for Marc to do our laundry (don't worry, he was using eco-friendly detergent).

When we returned to the house we were met by Lucero, one of the people who runs the centre, and Sam, the other Dutch student who was to be our translator.  Lucero showed us how to feed the animals and clean their cages.

For the next two weeks our daily routine would be to wake up around 7am if you were to wake Molly and feed her or 7.30 to be ready to feed the animals by 8am.  Most of the animals lived off a diet of green or yellow bananas and maize.  Each animal has its diet set out and it took us a few goes to get the hang of who gets what.  Mornings mean cleaning.  We needed to clean the enclosures of most of the animals everyday.  Most were not an issue but Anastasia often proved difficult.  To clean her enclosure we had to lure her out to a separate area with a banana.  We would then clean the cage and strategically hide bananas around her house before letting her return.  I was not there when it happened but when Fish and Rogier went to clean her enclosure one morning, Anastasia decided she was going to take herself on an outing.  After a few tense moments watching her run down the hill and to attempt to break into a house nearby, she finally returned.

After the morning feed Lucero would often ask the boys to help with jobs around the place.  Marc and Fish were tasked with fixing a gate, a tank and guttering system, cleaning out and fixing a pool for a potential group of Capybara, catching fish and cleaning out the tortoise enclosure, and cleaning and repairing the agouti's pool.  Marc often also broke things just so he could fix things, one example being lock to the front of the house.  This would have been less of an issue if we didn't have Molly to look after but she was always so inquisitive to be inside with everyone and eat every scrap of food off the floor.  

Fish, Lucero and Marc trying to catch the fish in the tortoise enclosure

Molly and Oso were helping

Despite the name, Fish turned out to be quite average at catching his namesake.  Marc caught 12 of the 14 fish.

The afternoon feed started around 3.30pm.  This is when the squirrel monkeys would come visit.  There were around 20 of them and they all demanded banana.  It would often take three of us and six bananas to calm them down.  They were not afraid of us at all and would often use anyone standing on the path as a landing pad before jumping off to another tree of ledge somewhere.  They were quite happy to eat out of your hand which is nice until you have three of them climbing all over you fighting for a piece of banana.

The onslaught begins - all happy and cute

Still cute

Starting to get a little more intense

A brief period of relief as they start to move on

Sheer madness and frustration set in, that or one of them just pooped on Marc.

I can deal with one

Even with one sitting on my head.

But more than one and things start the get a little stressful.  Molly wasn't too keen on them either.

So quick to turn their backs when we no longer had food.

Once the squirrel monkeys were satiated we were then able to feed the rest of the animals.  The rooster required hand feeding as he had a beak deformity and would follow you around until you gave him what he was after.  He would easily demolish a whole banana on his own and a bowl of maise (which had to be painstakingly fed to him one kernel at a time).  He was a lovely rooster though and liked to be around people.  Some afternoons the saddleback tamarinds would visit and if the squirrel monkeys allowed, we would hand feed them some banana too.

Martje managed to pick up Rooster and we forced our pats on him

Rooster would often follow us up the hill hoping to pick up scraps along the way

The saddleback tamarinds

A little baby tamarind hitching a ride

Coming down for a snack

Keeping an eye out for the naughty squirrel monkeys

Standing sentry

Showing us why they are called Saddleback tamarinds

Half way through our first week we had a few problems with our water tank and pump system which meant no showers.  We also had to abide by the old rule of "if it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down".  We all had to head to the river for showers in the evening which was a fun social experience in communal bathing.  During the second week we were able to leave little Molly with Lucero and we all headed to the river for a swim.  It was great to be able to do something as a group as often person has to stay behind with Molly.

Swimming in the river

From left to right: Sam (sitting), Martje, Molly, Fish, Rogier (in the water), Marc.

Old man vs. Older man.  We were all losers for having witnessed this.

Sam found a lovely area where we could take Molly to try and encourage her to climb.  Fish, Martje, Marc, Molly, Coco, Oso and I all ventured up there one day in the hope that Molly would venture up some of the higher trees.  She did climb a few but we weren't overly successful in getting her to climb anything substantial.

Molly thinking about climbing

Molly thinking about eating a bug

Molly trying to camouflage herself

Molly on the move

Molly spotting a tree she may like to climb

Molly testing out the tree

Finally giving it a go

Molly's audience, waiting for her to climb

Marc's one true love

Marc's second love

Leigh trying out her Molly impersonation on Coco, and Coco not being impressed, he only had eyes for Marc anyway.

Molly snacking on some guava

Marc getting some monkey love

For me looking after Molly was probably the highlight.  For the first week we were there she became quite attached to Fish and myself as we spent a lot of time with her taking her on walks, feeding her and talking to her.  She had a definite personality and could be very stubbord when she wanted. She liked her independence but wanted to know someone was nearby.  She had a habit of curling her tail around my neck and hanging down to try and eat leaves and catch insects.  Cute at first but after consecutive days I started to get what felt like rope burn around my neck.  She could be very playful and loved being tickled and bounced around.  She was like a little child but obviously much cooler as she had a tail.

Taking Molly for a walk

I would say for Marc his highlight was completely ripping his pants apart, sewing them together overnight only to rip them a second time when digging out another animal pool. Luckily there is no photographic evidence of this.

The Group
Front row: Lucero, her son David, Sam, Molly, Martje
Back row: Leigh, Marc, Rogier, Fish