After the exotic and weird impressions of the Belen Market, we decided to spent the last days in the North with some animal inhabitants… 🐒
Manatee Rescue Center
We read about the Centro de Rescate Amazónico (CREA), or Amazon Rescue Center, a place for rescued animals, such as monkeys, turtles and manatees (!). 😍
Many species in the Amazon, like the manatee and pink dolphin, are critically endangered. One main reason is the human. The animals are illegally beeing hunted or captured and sold on the black market…The Manatee Rescue Center is trying to free those animals before it’s too late.
We went to the center located outside of Iquitos by a local bus, which is still a unique experience. A grumpy spanish guide told us that they have a german volunteer and quickly brought us to him. On the way we saw some of the other animals, like monkeys. The center is keeping them for a couple of months before releasing them to the nearby island, “La Isla de los Monos”. But more about the monkeys later on… 😉🐒
The german volunteer was really nice and told us everything about the center and what they do. They committed themselves to rescuing and rehabilitating orphaned Amazonian manatees in addition to providing an environmental education program.
So far they already helped to get around 23 manatees back to health and released them into freedom! When we visited they also had a lot of turtles and 3 orphaned manatees. They were still little, even if they already appeared pretty big! That’s why these cute animals are also lovingly called “sea cows”. 😄🐮 They would stay some more months before they are old and big enough to be released again.
We watched the manatees swimming around and eating (and they ate a lot!) 😅 It was really awesome and we could have watched them all day long!
Monkey Island
At the Rescue Center we heard about another animal place, La Isla de los Monos, or Island of the Monkeys.
Other than the manatees, most of the monkeys in the Rescue Center were captured almost for their whole life and therfore are used to people. Releasing them into the Amazon with other wild monkeys wouldn’t really work out…That is why there is a cage-free rescue and rehabilitation center for them on an island close to Iquitos!
La Isla de los Monos is a family run place, where monkeys can live in their natural habitat.
We got there a bit adventurously by a small kind of public boat from Iquitos which brought us directly to the island. 🚤😅 Disembarking and entering the island through a landing stage with some very loose stairs almost ended with Magda falling into the water. 😮 But we made it!
After a short walk alone through the jungle we reached the “office“. Some of the animal inhabitants already welcomed us by climbing quickly onto us! That was a surprising start, as we didn’t think we would even see monkeys that close and cage-free! As they were still pretty small, the people on the island are working to build them up to reintegrate them to their relatives. A guide showed us around while the monkeys kept on climbing around on us! Christian got some of the small monkeys on his head, while Magda got herself a little one who wanted to be carried around. 🙉😍🐒
As they were still little they wanted to be around us. Especially on the head, as the hair and the body heat reminds them of their mothers. It was a very cool experience and watching the very playful monkeys really gets your heart going! 🐵🐵🐵
