Akumel Monkey Sanctuary

The first thing on our agenda was to meet Pedro’s niece, Edith, at one of her favourite restaurants for authentic local food in Playa del Carmen. I drove us into town and we found the place pretty quickly. The food was excellent (they served goat stew!) and Edith was so kind and friendly. She was also bilingual, and helped make the meeting go more smoothly for me. She was the first member of Pedro’s family I have met after the twins.

After our early meal, our plans were open and flexible because our flight out that evening from Cancún was not till 6:30 pm. Pedro said he was open to anything. I suggested Parque Nacional (Tulum National Park) because it combined a beach at Tulum with more Mayan ruins. Andre was having none of that. “We already went to ruins. AND a beach,” he said. “What do YOU want to do?” I asked, trying to make a point.

Andre pulled out his phone and in 10 minutes piped up, “There’s a monkey sanctuary.” This – for any teenagers who may be reading this blog post – is exactly what your parents wish you would do sometimes: come up with your own plan if our plan is so bad. Andre’s suggestion was awesome. Oh yeah, we were all in!

I used to have a pet iguana, and now I am drawn to them wherever I see them. It is so hard to believe these giant lizards are wild. Mine was much larger and more colourful, and I assume that’s because he was spoiled.

We arrived and were told that tours left at specific times, and we had an hour wait till the next two-hour tour. We were willing to wait, and wandered around the visitor’s center. There were bathrooms and a gift shop and a few monkeys behind glass.

We joined a group of about 15 and our guide seemed excited to be able to give her tour bilingually for two or three of us who looked like we needed it. We first went outside and circled around a Native Mayan man who conducted a ceremony in the Mayan language. This felt familiar to me as a Native person. He brought smudge around, and I pulled the smoke to me by moving my hands as a Cherokee would do – no one else did that, except Pedro who started to, but then stopped. ha ha! I looked like a greedy North American trying to get more smoke than the others. (You’ll see in the video below.)

Our tour included a history of the facility, which was started in only 2007. The state of Quintana Roo and the country of Mexico has the problem of discovering illegally kept exotic pets, or finding illegally shipped exotic pets before they are sold. The animals get confiscated, but then what? The Akumal Monkey Sanctuary was started with the idea to properly care for confiscated monkeys, but soon its scope expanded. Their mission statement now explains that they will take in any animal species that has been negatively impacted by humans and needs a home because it cannot be released into the wild.

They work in partnership with the Mexican Federal Office of Environmental Protection, who will call them in to help confiscate animals that are found. They are trying to increase their program for rehabilitation and release. Their mission also includes a plan to advance environmental messaging, and I can verify they take it seriously. We were warned about a dozen times about how harmful it is to adopt an exotic pet or to turn a blind eye or to support businesses that engage in trafficking exotic pets.

The facility also conducts research of their animals, predominantly of the monkeys. In addition to the captives, there is a population of local Spider Monkeys who are wild, but just like to hang out there. It’s a great bonus for tourists, but more importantly, the researchers get another population to study that is more like a typical monkey group that is not caged. We saw several of these monkeys while we were there.

If you noticed how I said that the facility accepts any kind of animal, you can understand that it has become a sort of zoo. We got to see many of their guests.

We came upon a small cenote that was not on the tour, but within the boundaries of the park. The tour guide spent a very long time with the Macaws, as one by one, each member of our tour group got selfies standing in front of the Macaws. Then, bird handlers came in and offered to let each person hold a Macaw and get their photo taken. All of that allowed us the time to ditch them and explore the cenote on our own. Andre was pretty eager to see, since he had not visited Cenote X’Canche with us earlier.

When we came back up from the cenote, our tour group was still charmed by the birds. We allowed ourselves to be talked into photos with them, too.

After the macaws, they took us to see some snakes, and hold one if we wanted to. There was also a bathroom and they handed out bottles of icy water while we waited. As described in the previous four days, we were still on the Yucatán and the weather was still unbelievably hot and sticky. I was sweating buckets and the bottled water was drained right away as we hydrated.

We got to see a few very special monkeys on the way out, but they were so hard to take photos of because they were behind glass covered in reflections.

The very last part of our tour was the funnest. We had to remove all our accessories and put them into a plastic tub: cell phones, glasses, earrings, bracelets, even clips and rubberbands in our hair. They told us the point was not to tempt the monkey who would be close enough to us to take those things off us. I suspected it was also so that no one would have a way to take their own photos, and would be more tempted to buy photos from the facility.

Our monkey would be jumping from person to person, and standing on our heads and in our laps. Each time she jumped to someone, she would be handed a small treat. We were told each monkey only did this once or twice a day, then was left alone the rest of the day. They wanted to show us that they take good care of the primates. We saw their big white board listing about six resident monkeys and we saw the tic marks of those who had already visited tourists today, and who had not yet been with any tourists.

All of us tourists were ushered into a cage and told to sit on a long bench, side by side. We could see the adjacent cages with the monkeys who shrieked and sqwaked and clung to the cage walls as close as they could get to us. You see, they know tourists mean treats and they wanted treats! They brought in our girl. We were told not to interact with the monkey, not to try and touch her, and to try to hold still and not scare her.

I was at the very end of the row of people and thus was the very first person the monkey jumped onto. It was startling and everyone laughed. I could tell they did that on purpose. 🙂 Then our pretty little monkey hopped down the line, from head to head, and the giggles followed her. She went up and down the line twice, so we each had her on us four times.

All the remaining photos, as well as the video, were taken by their official photographer, and then sold to us. I appreciate this, even though we had to pay, because no one ever takes photos of the photographer. :o)

At the visitor’s center at the end, we received treats made by local women: freshly made bread with salsa, which I would call fry bread here in the states. We also got to taste horchata, a common Mexican rice milk drink.

As we drove away, on our way to drop off the rental car and then take our evening flight, Liam said, “That was the best thing of the whole trip!”

Thank you Andre. ❤