Almost a puma.

A few weeks ago another volunteer and I spent the night in the hide on the 4x4 trail in the hope of seeing the juvenile puma that has been frequenting the area. Although we did not see we it we did come very close.
I had previously put a dead chicken from the local shop in front of the "scent marking tree" the cat regularly uses to try and increase our chances of success. This proved to be very successful as I finally got footage of it on my camera trap.

The night we camped on the trail I did the same and for many hours we sat in darkness listening to the sounds of tawny-browed owls and frogs and watched the displays of fireflies.

 As much as I wanted to stay awake to see if anything came I could not stay alert all night and eventually we both fell asleep. However at about 4am I awoke to the sound of purring, and soon released that it was coming from the forest just to the left of us. Both of us stayed awake for a further 4 hours listening intensely to the sound, I heard a few grunts and on occasion a heavy breath. The sound became very clear and close (maybe 10 meters) on several occasions and it was apparent it was moving around the hide. It could surely smell us inside the hide and the dead chicken nearby and was wisely suspicious. It never did show itself, but listening to recordings on the internet I am 90% sure that it was the juvenile puma. It just goes to show how intelligent and secretive these cats are even at an early age. We only rarely heard a twig snap and it was almost impossible to detect him moving at night.