Greta Palmer was sitting on her hotel balcony in Hampi, India, when she heard a commotion upstairs.
Her friends had been eating breakfast when a troop of monkeys materialized. They blocked the exit and engaged in X-rated acts, much to her travel companions’ horror. Palmer was laughing at the animals’ antics and her friends’ shrieks when she discovered she wasn’t alone.
“I slowly turned my head around and I see six monkeys in my hotel room, ransacking my room,” said Palmer, chief marketing and communications officer at Best Friends Animal Society, who spent several weeks in India last month.
Before absconding with her apples and bananas, the bonnet macaques dumped sugar packets from the coffee station all over the floor and suitcases. One chucked Palmer’s retainer across the room. Another emptied its bladder.
“I didn’t realize it until I was walking across the room, and all of a sudden, I noticed monkey pee on the bottom of my pajamas,” Palmer said.
Palmer hollered at them to leave. That night, the scofflaws returned, pounding on the door.
“It was hilarious and appalling at the same time,” she said.
When traveling, wildlife encounters often resemble nature documentaries, cinematic episodes capturing an animal’s strength, beauty and spirit. Many others look more like “America’s Funniest Videos.” Monkeys raiding hotel rooms. Sea lions nipping at snorkelers’ heels. A penguin bunking with a surprised guest.
Animals never cease to amuse — and amaze — us, especially when our interactions with them are unscripted. In some destinations — such as India, Australia and Africa, where development has encroached on natural areas — animals and humans bump into each other on a regular basis. You should do your best to keep a safe distance from wild creatures, even if they are in “your” space. And, as Palmer learned, always lock the door and avoid carrying bananas in monkey-dense places.
We’ve collected more anecdotes from travelers and animal specialists who found themselves in some truly wild situations around the world.
An elephant’s solution to snoring
After a long day of tracking lions in Zambia’s Kafue National Park, a team from Panthera, a wildcat conservation organization, set up tents in the bush. One camper’s snoring was so loud, a park resident decided to take action.
“A passing elephant took exception and threw a table on his tent,” said Jake Overton, director of Panthera Zambia. “While this didn’t injure the scout, it did give him a huge fright and stopped the snoring for good.”
A macaque with a taste for croissants
Heidi Durflinger was enjoying a croissant and fruit near the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary in Ubud, Bali, when a local dropped by her breakfast table.
“It jumped right out of the tree and onto the table and helped itself,” Durflinger, CEO of EF World Journeys, said of the long-tailed macaque.
“I screamed, jumped out of my chair, then grabbed my phone” — not to take photos but to thwart the thief from stealing her device, too.
Sugar thieves in South Africa
In South Africa, two baby monkeys would break into Stacy Gruen’s office for their daily fix. Once inside, they’d dunk their faces in the sugar bowl by the coffee machine.
“I was always startled to look up from my computer and see a monkey with a complete sugar face smiling at me over the top of my laptop,” said Gruen, a senior public relations manager at Intrepid Travel.
A penguin’s five-star nest
Growing up in Australia, Malcolm Griffiths is accustomed to animals in his personal space.
On a trip to Tasmania, Griffiths stayed at the Diamond Island Resort, which sits along a route used by little penguins, which travel nightly between the ocean and their burrows. He said he “foolishly” ignored signs advising guests to close the sliding door and woke up to a chirping sound and the sight of a penguin hopping around the foot of his bed.
“No doubt, it was enjoying the warmth of my room,” said Griffiths, a destination marketing and management specialist based in New York.
Griffiths shooed the uninvited guest out the door, which left without a peep.
Honey badgers raid the fridge
During her travels in Africa, Rebecca Gawley, head of public relations at Unforgettable Travel, crossed paths with many animals with rap sheets.
At the Sabi Sabi Private Game Reserve in South Africa, she recalls the time a guest had left a bikini out to dry in the sun. Vervet monkeys stole the top and pranced around with it, entertaining guests with their loot. On the same trip, vervets broke into a dorm room in South Africa and pilfered a volunteer’s pack of contraceptive pills.
Honey badgers, which Gawley described as “notoriously naughty,” broke into a fridge at a lodge in Namibia and helped themselves to the goodies. To prevent future pillaging by the weaselly critters, the staff had to place a huge chain with a padlock around the fridge.
Seals play tag at the Galapagos
On a Galapagos adventure, Amy Denniston was snorkeling when she felt a strange smacking sensation against her leg.
“It was like a mouth sort of nipping at my kneecap,” said Denniston, a senior research librarian at a D.C. law firm. “It wasn’t painful or sharp. It was just this weird pressure.”
She peered through the water but didn’t see any rocks or sea creatures. So, she resumed swimming when she felt a tug on her flipper. She rose to the surface and snapped some photos underwater, exposing the culprits: two young sea lions chasing each other and biting each other’s flippers.
“They tried to get my attention,” she said, “but they probably went away from the whole experience being like, ‘Well, that one is no fun.’”
A buffalo says hello
As the child of missionaries in Kenya and a former Africa analyst with the CIA, Holly Berkley Fletcher has a barrel of bad monkey — and Cape buffalo — stories. She has been on about 20 safaris over 40 years and hosts tour groups with Golden Green Africa Safaris.
During an excursion to Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, she and her family exited the lodge’s dining room to find a herd of Cape buffalo populating the pathways to their rooms. They slowly edged around the dangerous animals — “I was scared to death,” she said — and made it back safely. A short time later, they heard a rustling noise. Fletcher opened the curtains and came face-to-face with a buffalo chomping on the flowers in the window box.
At Nakuru National Park in Kenya, she said her family was waiting in the car while her dad paid the entry fee when a vervet monkey jumped through the open window. The surprise passenger triggered her mother’s protective defenses.
“Without hesitation, my mother punched him in the face and he fell out backward,” Fletcher said.
Animals with guest privileges
In Costa Rica, Debbie Gruelle said the wildlife has made itself at home at her boutique property, Lamangata Luxury Surf Resort.
Gruelle has played fetch with an agouti, a Central American rodent, that frequently steals her dog’s bone.
A resident toucan often sneaks into the dining area and nabs oranges from the fruit bowl. A gray-cowled wood rail, a chicken-like bird, takes daily sunset swims in the resort’s infinity pool.
The monkeys, which don’t have a room but could really use one, will mate in the trees in the front of the property. More soothing, an oropendola that lives in a giant cenizaro tree sings sweet evening lullabies to guests.
A baboon in the bathroom
Michael Paredes, a safari leader with Dazzle Africa, was showering at a camp in Zambia when his wife, Nancy, noticed a hand reaching around the corner of the bathroom wall.
The hand, too hairy to be human, belonged to a baboon. The monkey snatched a toiletry bag and Paredes “unwisely ran after it.” He slipped on the concrete and came crashing down. Nancy yelled at the perpetrator, and a camp manager rushed over to help. The baboon dropped the bag.
The baboon got away scot-free, but Paredes wasn’t so lucky. He ruptured his elbow bursa trying to catch the thief.
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