Mother & baby monkey crossing the road

Julie and I backed away from the area where the howler monkeys in this series of photos were crossing the road.  The alpha male, seeing that the others in his group lacked the ability to jump from the trees on one side of the road to the trees across the road, jumped back to the original side where the mother and baby were sitting in a branch.

The alpha male led the mother and baby down the trunk of the tree to the ground and they scampered across the road.  Julie and I backed away to give them ample distance and to make sure that no cars were coming.

This little story shows why it is beneficial that the government now requires that all new condos and homes in the Tamarindo area will have to leave about half of the land in vegetation.  The howler monkeys need pathways to travel from tree to tree.  The Capitan Suizo Resort, a couple of blocks away, has a little pathway hanging high up across the street for the monkeys to use to cross the road.

We are showing photos of Tanzania this week on our Viva la Voyage travel photo site, including a photo of a different kind of monkey than this.