Monkeys and Turtles in Chiriqui province

About a week ago we travelled to Chiriqui. Because of our activities with the Apenheul Primate Centre and Summit Gardens, we also came into contact with the NGO CREA (www.crea.org) and Susan and David Waligoora. The latter two are Americans building a house in Barqueta, which is situated on the coast south of the city David. Close by is the wildlife refuge Barqueta which consists mostly of mangrove and secondary forests and beaches. It is one of the few places where squirrel monkeys still occur and turtles use the beaches to lay their eggs. However, according to David and Sue, the protection of this refuge is less than perfect. So we wanted to have a look and see if we could somehow help and if we could bring tourists to this area.

Well, do not get up your hopes just yet, the place is not very suitable for tourists at the moment. There is a choice between an expensive beach resort ($ 125/night) or a cheap room without mosquito net and communal and not too clean sanitary facilities. Sand flies and mosquitoes are active from 4 pm until 9 am in most places and 24 hours a day in shady areas such as forests, so you are continually applying repellent and still swatting at the ones that try to bite you on your face.

But the local community is very friendly. The family that runs the cheaper accommodation is also involved in protection of turtles. The husband is a fanatical runner and every day on his early morning beach run checks for new turtle nests. Those are dug op and the eggs are reburied in a protected area. Unfortunately, they sometimes do not release the hatchlings immediately, but prefer to wait until a second nest hatches so that they can release a larger number at once and invite school children to watch and help. While we were there, the hatchlings from the first nest, which had hatched 36 hours before release, looked dehydrated and behaved rather disoriented. But that might be a small price to pay for the awareness that is being raised among the future generation.

The beach at Barqueta is not great. A lot of sand, yes, but the surf is too strong for a pleasant and safe swim and too close to the beach for surfing. Therefore, the reserve is the only tourist attraction in the area. But the reserve is not very accessible. There is one circular trail, which is not easy to find. Walking it at a normal pace will take you all of 15 minutes and even if you stop to study every little brown bird, as Kees likes to do, it still won’t take more than a good hour. It took us more time to find the trail than to walk it twice….

The first day we couldn’t even find the trail, let alone any monkeys. But in the afternoon the owners of the beach cottage took us along to an unprotected bit of mangrove creek that they use to clean their catch of fish. They said there were always monkeys in that area, even squirrel monkeys. We did see (and hear) howler monkeys, but no squirrel monkeys that day. We thought that that was not much of a problem, because we had found the one and lonely park warden earlier that day and agreed that he would take us to an island in the reserve where we would certainly see them.

Unfortunately there appeared to have been some misunderstanding; the park warden took us to the trail mentioned above (which is indeed on an island, seeing as it is surrounded by smallish mangrove creeks), rather than to the island we wanted to go to. The warden is actually quite busy during this time of year, he has to monitor and protect turtle nests inside the reserve, so maybe he just didn’t have the time to go on an expedition.

But Kees at least was happy because he saw a male yellow-billed cotinga (Carpodectus antoniae), which is rare in Panama.