Today we set off to the privately owned ecological reserve, about an hour from Caratinga, which is famous for its population and conservation of rare northern Muriqui monkeys.
Enroute we stopped the car once to view two vividly coloured orange/black/red and white birds in trees along the roadside; they were two beautiful campo troupial.
Back to the muriquis; they are the largest primate in South America and a threatened species due to habitat loss. This reserve can now never be used for anything else and has some heavyweight international supporters including Harrison Ford.
If possible we wanted to see the Muriquis and also the resident brown howler monkeys and the brown capuchin monkeys. We were the only visitors to the park today - it is a very special place and they only allow pre booked groups - numbers are kept low to ensure the monkeys who are subject of research are not disturbed.
As we waited for Roberto our reserve guide to liase with the researchers to see where the monkeys last went to sleep we did some bird watching. We had a great view of the plumbeous antvireo - a rare endemic bird which is often on birders lists.
Roberto arrived to say the monkeys were waking up near his house which was back down the road we had come in on....so we jumped in his car and made our way to the spot - we then had an extraordinary couple of hours watching these animals asleep, waking up, scratching, sunning themselves, eating leaves and fruits, hanging by their prehensile tails moving from tree to tree then resting. While they were doing that Fred found some capuchin monkeys high in the canopy stripping and eating the bark off a tree which we had good views of ....we then watched the Muriquis some more before Roberto saw troop of brown howlers making their way through the area - lots of photographs and lots of strained necks looking up into the canopies of the very tall trees......brilliant....we never expected to see all 3 primates so close together.
We then left the young researcher and walked back up the path we had originally started to walk up - our route was dotted with a few birds but more brown howlers - ones we could see and then other troops we could hear. We heard that another researcher was with a group of Muruquis but they were a long way from the path - with which we saw a mother and youngster in the canopy eating, swinging and slowly moving through- apparently these two had become separated from the other group yesterday - that said they seemed quite content and happy on their own and gave us more photographing opportunities.
On the bird front we saw two jacamars and a scaled antbird which we actually got to photo; an elusive bird which Fred rarely gets a chance to photo as it usually stays hidden....so happy we went off to lunch.
A lovely lunch cooked for us by the resident cook; it set us up nicely for the trip back to Belo. We signed the visitors book, bought two t-shirts to support the cause - nice light ones so we can show them off in the Pantanal, said our goodbyes and set off for Belo Horizante and a night in the Ramada hotel near the airport. On our route out of the reserve Fred spotted more brown howler monkeys on the branches across the road; so we ended with our best photographing opportunity especially of the big male but there were also mums and babies.
An excellent day and excellent end to this part of the trip but sadly we had to say goodbye to Fred - a really excellent guide who looked after us extremely well for the whole 1800km 7 day exploration of lesser known parts of Brazil.