Well, on our third attempt, we finally made it out to Monkey beach. You may recall our first attempt a few months ago - we tried to hike out to monkey beach and came up a little short - about a mile. Monkey beach is around on the back side of the island - it is not accesible by road, just hiking trails and boats. Our hiking attempt failed for two reasons - 1) we got tired of walking in 95 degree heat and 90% humidity - and 2) the trail to monkey beach passes through another beach. Once we hit the first beach the kids were in the water and playing around before we could stop them. Our second attempt was last week. We decided we would just take a boat this time (you can hire a boat to take you out for 50 RM - about $15. and that is for the whole family, not per person) Last Saturday we were all packed up and ready to go when a big thunderstorm hit. It lasted for several hours so we ended up staying inside for most of the morning. This week we finally made it! We took a cool little boat out - only about a 5 minute ride - to this nice, fairly secluded beach where we spend the rest of the day. for the morning, we weren't sure why they called it monkey beach since we hadn't seen a single monkey, but by lunch time (of course) it was fairly obvious. We had close to 20 wandering around our picnic area. These are very aggressive monkeys however. They would steal food right out of your hand. They made off with pretty much every loose piece of food they could find. They even carried off our garbage bags (I suspect they were sorely disapointed by the one that had the Muilenbergs poopy diaper in it)!! 
I made the mistake of feeding them - ok, I still don't think it was a mistake - it was pretty cool having the monkeys come take food from me. The only problem was that we spent the rest of the afternoon chasing them away. The funniest part was when Kirsten went to chase one off. He glared at her and made a face, showing his teeth, and hissed. Then he starting running at her - she took of running into the ocean. It was pretty funny :-) (don't tell her I told you) I like this picture- five or six monkeys lined up trying to get food. Don't let the pic fool you though - at no time did they wait nicely in line- They fought and stole food from each other left and right.
We saw another rare breed of monkey also - this is the Ethan monkey. Well known for its colorful blue coat and incredible skill at Mario Kart Wii....
Here are a few pictures I took while on a hike last week. There are several large hills on our island, this one takes about two hours to climb to the top, very steep trails, but the views from the top are magnificent. the line you see across the water is the bridge to the mainland. We have been across this several times now, it is very cool.
This is another pic from the trail up to the top- about 1/2 way up I think. This is a beautiful trail, through the jungle with itermitent views of the plains below. We saw a 7ft long cobra crossing the trail, two other snakes, several lizards, a giant catapiller (as big as my hand) and several other animals. And yes, lots of monkeys...
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