Monkeys in the Streets

I’ve mentioned a little about the issue of cultural perceptions. Specifically, I’ve said how many Brazilians I have met feel that people from other countries think that the Brazil is nothing but jungles with monkey’s running through the streets.

We know from my blog that this isn’t true. That being said, I’m not trying to feed the stereotype, but I can’t help it if there actually ARE monkeys running in the streets of Maringá from time to time.

This isn’t a negative by any means. It is actually pretty freakin’ cool.

There is a park in a different area of town. We’ve been told they shut down the actual park, not letting anyone access the interior, due to the crime rate. However, there is a large walking trail around the outside with lanes for both walking and biking. People still use the trails for exercise.

We decided to check out this park this past weekend. We had driven by it before and actually seen some of the monkeys in dumpsters nearby. We thought we’d try our chances of seeing them face to face. Well it was our lucky day.

As soon as we got to the trail there were a group of people out looking at a few that had come to the edge of the fence for some food. We decided to run back to the apartment and grab some bananas that were on their death bed. It seemed much more exciting to feed them to monkeys than to make banana bread.

So we defiantly disobeyed the ‘Don’t Feed the Monkeys’ signs and got some great pictures in the process. Their intelligence never ceases to amaze me. As soon as they saw the bag in my husbands hand they came down the fence to sit at his feet.
We only had a few so we felt a little bad that we couldn’t feed everyone. You can see the baby on the back of the one taking the banana if you look closely. Actually there were two with babies.

They don’t share either. My husband gave one of them two, thinking they would share. She simply hid the second one while finishing the first. She was definitely keeping them all for herself.

I admit they scare me a little and I’m sure they could get aggressive if provoked. I was a little worried they might get mad when we didn’t have enough bananas for all of them. They simply gave us a sad look and seemed to understand that we didn’t have anymore. One actually came up and touched my husband’s leg to get his attention as if he was asking him if he had anymore.

That adventure made for a fun Saturday. So let me clear up the confusion. There aren’t monkeys running everywhere in the streets of Brazil, but there are definitely a lot of them that run around at the park. I’m sure they make it into the street from time to time too.