Sunday outing

It is Sunday and after a very long week that included working on Saturday, we went on an adventure. Andrew has taken up driving which as I have mentioned is a very different animal than driving in the states. He is of course good at it but that doesn’t keep me from worrying about what might happen if we get a flat tire. (I am sure it would be fine…I hope) We took a little jaunt down the rode to the local wild life conservancy, Lekki Conservation Center. We parked congratulated ourselves on our safe arrival and set off.
The first encounter is the main building that evidently becomes a place of worship on Sunday. We didn’t go in for obvious reasons but could hear music all around. People love their Sunday worship here and the streets are alive with music and prayer. There must be a “church” every 100 feet or so. The music and singing are quite beautiful. I ponder conversion for a brief moment but think better of it.
A man meets us and charges us a nominal fee and shows us a couple of turtles and the path. The turtles were amazing. One they claim was at least one hundred. Harper thought they were pretty cool and even touched one on our way out.
The path was a boardwalk through the swampland. It gave a pretty generous picture of what this area looked like before it was what it is now. It was straight out of “African Queen”. We did however have an agenda and were searching for something particular.
The park has all kinds of animals: crocodiles, lizards, crab, lots of birds, and monkeys! We were looking to fulfill the African dream. Feed monkeys bananas…right? We were equipped with our bag of bananas, camera and determination. We stalked into the swamp and almost immediately heard rustling in the trees above us. We tried to put our banana out on the railing to see if they would come down. It did not. I fact threw some nuts down at us.
“Oh well.” We’ll go look at crocodiles. Harper was wary (smart guy) walking on the boards. He reminded me of my mother getting onto an escalator. Very focused and a bit worried. He could see down through the boards into the water but I showed him you could step on the cracks and you wouldn’t fall through and he got it pretty quick.
We walked around with our bananas for about an hour and saw beautiful butterflies, some fish and little birds. No monkeys. We did get to climb to the top of a huge Magnolia tree. (See pics on FB) Harper was getting tired and it was hot. So we headed back to the car. Suddenly we see the monkey hanging out on the railing curled up like a cat. Then, the trees erupt and three monkeys start coming in. Andrew is so excited. (TheHarpervideos on u tube or check Andrew’s face book)
We feed the monkeys bananas. One we nick named “Scarface” looked at Andrew like “Give me the banana and I won’t kill your family.” They were so close. If I didn’t already have a Harper monkey on my back I could have reached out and touched them. It was a much-needed escape from the rat race at home (our neighbors trapped their rat…yucky) and a proud moment in our family evolutionary history.