A hidden jungle sanctuary, a quiet moment of trust, and the unexpected lesson I didn’t know I needed about connection, presence, and what it really means to be chosen.
🎧 Soundtrack for this story:
Coast Line— Hollow Coves
Press play, then keep reading.
I didn’t go to Mexico expecting anything life-changing.
I just wanted a break… maybe a good story to tell when I got home.
Then a wild monkey climbed into my lap — and everything got quiet.
My daughter connecting with a baby monkey in the wild.
The first monkey didn’t come to me right away.
He sat low in the branches, small and still, watching. Curious. Not afraid. Just… evaluating. Like he had learned, somewhere along the way, that not everything reaching toward him could be trusted.
Beside me, the woman who cared for them spoke softly in her German accent, the kind of voice reserved for fragile things that have already seen too much.
“They choose,” she said. “Always.”
So we waited.
No phones. No talking. No trying.
Just the quiet hum of the jungle breathing around us. Leaves shifting. Distant calls echoing through the trees. Time, somehow, loosening its grip.
And then… he moved.
A slow drop from the branch. A pause. Another step closer.
Until, without ceremony, he climbed gently into my lap.
Not like an animal approaching a human.
But like trust… being offered on someone else’s terms.
Safe to say, the monkeys seemed to like me :)
It all started like any other family trip.
Cancun, Mexico. My wife, our three adult kids, and five days of what most people go there for… sunshine, tequila, and more food than anyone should reasonably consume.
We’d done the excursions before. Zip lines. Cenotes. ATVs kicking up dust in the jungle. Fun, no doubt. But the kind of fun that fades somewhere between the airport and real life.
This time, I wanted something different.
Not better. Just… deeper.
So I went down the rabbit hole. Late-night searches. Pages most people don’t scroll far enough to find. And somewhere in that quiet corner of the internet, I stumbled across something that didn’t feel like an excursion at all.
It felt like a story.
A humble website. No flashy booking buttons. No curated Instagram shots. Just words… carefully written… about a couple who had built a life in the jungle.
Years earlier, a local had brought them an injured baby monkey — hurt by poachers, barely alive. They took it in. Healed it. Loved it.
And then another came.
And another.
Until their home wasn’t just a home anymore. It had become something else entirely… a sanctuary woven into the trees.
Not a zoo. Not a tourist stop.
A place where broken things were given a second chance — and somehow, chose to stay.
Getting in wasn’t as simple as booking a time slot.
You had to write to her.
Not a request… more like an introduction. A quiet explanation of who you were and why you wanted to come.
So I wrote.
Honestly. A little emotionally, if I’m being real.
And she wrote back.
“Yes,” she said. “You may come.”
I didn’t tell my family where we were going.
Just that it would be different.
They were curious. A little skeptical. Probably expecting another version of something we’d already done.
But when we turned off the road and drove into what felt like a real-life Swiss Family Robinson scene — homes built into the trees, walkways above the jungle floor — they knew this wasn’t going to be ordinary.
She greeted us in the driveway.
Invited us in for lemonade like we were old friends.
And as she told her story, two baby monkeys ran freely through her home — climbing onto her shoulders, tugging gently at her shirt, chattering like children who had never known anything but safety.
She spoke to them the same way she spoke to us.
With love.
With familiarity.
With belonging.
Then came the instructions.
“Listen carefully,” she said. “This matters.”
We were led up into the trees, into a netted enclosure that felt more like their world than ours.
We sat along the edges.
She handed us small pieces of food.
“Do not feed them,” she said.
Just hold your hands open.
Palms up.
“They will decide.”
And then she said something I didn’t expect.
“Clear your mind. They feel everything.”
When the gates opened, they came.
Some slowly. Some boldly. Some stayed back, watching like the first one had watched me.
Feeling us out.
Measuring something we couldn’t see.
Now, I’ve always been someone animals seem to trust. Dogs, cats… even the ones people warn you about.
But this was different.
Within minutes… they were on me.
One climbed onto my head like it belonged there.
Two settled into my shoulders.
Two more curled into my lap.
Holding onto me… not tightly, but comfortably. Like I wasn’t something to fear.
Like I was… familiar.
Monkeys bonding with me
My family looked at me, half laughing, half stunned.
“What are you doing?” they asked.
Honestly?
Nothing.
And maybe that was everything.
It wasn’t loud.
It wasn’t thrilling in the way most excursions try to be.
It was quiet.
Almost sacred.
These small creatures — some abandoned, some injured, some who had every reason to distrust the world — had chosen, in that moment, to trust me.
Not because I reached for them.
But because I didn’t.
And that’s what stayed with me.
Not the novelty. Not the photos. Not even the story I’d get to tell afterward.
It was the feeling.
That connection doesn’t come from chasing.
It comes from presence.
From stillness.
From whatever it is inside of us that others can feel… even when we’re not saying a word.
I’ve spent my life loving my family deeply. Protecting them. Showing up for them in every way I know how.
And somewhere in that jungle, sitting quietly with five monkeys wrapped around me, I had a realization I didn’t expect.
They felt it.
Somehow… they felt that same energy.
That same instinct to love, to protect, to connect.
Photo by Sikwe Scarter on Unsplash
And a place where we can finally let our guard down… and just be.
A place where we feel safe enough…
to climb down,
get a little closer,
and choose to trust again.