Animals

There were the howler monkeys. Our first night in Tikal, I woke up in the dark to the sound of howlers, only I didn’t know that it was howlers at the time. I was expecting something like the whoops of the gibbons at the SF Zoo, but the sound that howlers make is more like the roar of a lion. (Molly can do a fair good imitation if you ask.) In the middle of the night, it was very, very spooky. We saw howlers in the trees around several ruins. At El Pilar, a howler decided that we didn’t belong there and began throwing shit at us.

There were also spider monkeys, especially at TIkal. The spider monkeys have white bellies, longer, more spindly arms, and move more quickly through the trees than the howlers. Both the howlers and the spiders seem to move in family groups and to make a fair amount of noise as they move through the trees, so they’re easy to spot. And if you find one, there are usually others close by. Yes, the babies are very, very cute.

We saw green iguanas and black iguanas. We went horseback riding one day in San Ignacio and the stable yard was full of iguanas, feeding, apparently, on what the horses left behind. There were geckos everywhere and I saw a Jesus Christ lizard on the lawn outside our room at the San Ignacio Hotel. It’s called a Jesus Christ lizard because it runs across the surface of the water. Most of the time, they move around slowly on all fours. Then a crest goes up on the tops of their heads and they stand up on their hind legs and run like crazy. I remembered them running like that from some ancient Walt Disney nature movie.

We also saw a Jesus Christ bird (it also walks on water, or, at least, on lily pads on the water) on the river on the trip to Lamanai. Before the rain began.

Still to come...
Scarab beetles. Huge wasp. Long-tailed grackles. Grey fox. Coatimundi. Wild turkeys.