RFI: Self-guiding (Searching) Muriquis and Others
Hi everyone!
My friend Uri who was with me recently in Bolivia is continuing his first, several-months-long South American adventure.
He’s mostly a birder, but I’m trying to convert him 😜. We had a good start in Bolivia and he’s keeping it up currently in Argentina.
He’ll be around Sao Paulo in Brazil towards the end of November, and wanted to see either muriqui without renting a car or a guide. Is this possible? What’s the best option? And “while he’s there…” Is there any lion tamarin he can sneak in, or any other super-intetesting mammal species he should target?
Obviously Brazil is huge and the mammalian possibilities are endless, but i was thinking to concentrate on high-profile species that would actually temp him to go see.
Any advice would be highly welcome!
Thanks in advance! 🙏🏻
Tomer
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4 Comments
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Eduardo Ruiz
These guys have tours to search the muriquis there over two days in the area recommended by Stefanie, but more importantly, if you want to do it yourself they have a map in their website of the trails/roads they follow in search of the muriqui so you should be able to just follow it yourself and ask the neighbours as mentioned by Stefanie
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Evan
Always happy to see more discussion of low-budget, no car mammalwatching, because that’s most of what I do too.
I was in São Paulo a few weeks ago but didn’t have a lot of time to get out in the nature. My partner and I did go to the botanical garden, where we easily found Brown Howler Monkeys and (introduced) Black-tufted-ear Marmosets. No luck with sloths, though they are sometimes seen there. For the birder, Red-breasted Toucans were findable (with binoculars and some listening).
It sounds like maybe you’re not going this far, but a couple hours east of Rio de Janeiro there are pretty reliable, free Golden Lion Tamarins accessible without a car at a municipal reserve near Unamar. Others have mentioned in their reports and I’m preparing a much more detailed report, but feel free to ask too in case you’re headed out that way.
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Stefanie
Hey Tomer,
My husband and I were in São Paulo in 2017 and visited a place to see muriqui. We really wanted to see muriqui, but we wanted a more low budget option than the classical go-to fazendas. I searched the internet and found some info in Portuguese about muriqui in São Francisco Xavier, not too far from São Paulo. We decided to give it a go. We rented a car and drove ourselves and we found the monkeys ourselves.
We stayed at a place we found on booking.com (Fazenda Monte Verde A Morada do Muriqui). It was nice there, but the people from the neighboring property knew much more about the muriqui and they see the muriqui very often on their property. We spent an afternoon and a day looking for the monkeys before we ran into the neighbors who knew actually gave us intel on the daily patterns of the muriqui. With this info, we gave it another try on our last morning, and we saw three muriqui moving through the canopy from the valley up the mountains – apparently a more or less daily trip the muriqui make. The neighbors also offered lodging – some sort of holiday apartment – and had a FB page, but I can’t find it right now.
The only other mammal we saw around there was a squirrel. There were some nice birds though.
Hope you find the muriqui – they are quite impressive 😊
Stefanie