Winding it up

hey folks,

so this is probably about my last blog from the southern hemisphere.

It certainly has been a wild ride and this last month has been no different.

After classes were over I headed back to my field site for about 2 weeks and got the rest of my soils collections done thanks to a ton of help from folks from Piracicaba and got to spend some quality time with Mark, the other american exchange student, who was helping me sieve soils. i traded him some lessons in portuguese subjunctive grammer for slang and swear words. a fair swap in my opinion.

Feeling rather proud of our accomplishments, I headed back to Curitiba to catch my plane to meet up with GW in Peru. why in the world it is cheaper to fly north to Rio and back south to Sao Paulo to go to Lima I will never understand. But we finally all made it, including GW's mom who came down from nicaragua to visit, and had a bit of a sleep in the airport before heading to Cusco...which by the way is awesome. We found a sweet little market with way too many cool things to buy, meaning we had to buy another dufflebag. surprised?

of course not.

After a couple days of alpaca-filled goodness and altitude adjustment, GW and I headed out for a

four day hike to Machu Picchu. not the inca trail, it's expensive and booked till september...but the SECOND most famous trail, or at least that's what they say. We had a bit of an adventure though because the trail is actually suppose to be 5 days, though the agency said it would be

no problem to shorten it to 4 days...slight exageration. we had to take a hair-raising-- chicken-playing--fall off the side of a mountain--near front end collision with a truck taxi ride to catch a train up to Agua Calientes to stay on schedule. and i thought the bus ride was kind of scary... But we made it though felt slightly lonely having abandoned our hiking group that we had bonded with. So we got up at 4am to hike up to Machu Picchu (in the pouring rain)for a nice view of white clouds. totally and utterly miserable.

So we hiked our blistered feet back down the mountain...defeated. however, after changing clothes and getting a cup of coffee, wouldn't you know it, but the sun came out. so after slightly debating econimizing 14 dollars for the bus ride back up versus a plane ticket back to Peru...we decided to go back up and take some better pictures, in dry clothes and sandles. triumph. and GW touched a llama.

So overall Peru was a success though the plane

ride to Rio was another 30 hour adventure of sitting in airports and arguing over food vouchers, thanks to delayed flights.

But we finally made it to Juliana's apartment, where I stayed over Carnival, to make our home base in Rio de Janeiro. We made it out to Ilha Grande and Paraty which were both really great and even got to sleep in past 5 am which never happened in Peru. We went up to see the big Jesus one day with yet another cloud bank thwarting our tourism.

So I had a better time getting back than GW who was delayed several days in a valuable learning experience about how to not purchase separate airline tickets when traveling in south america, or that trip insurance is a really good idea. So he got back just in time for his climbing trip out in california, and i got back just in time for my incubated flu virus (swine, alpaca, lama flu?) to take hold and spent the next couple days in bed.

Since then the german girl who was taking my room showed up early so we were all sort of

double bunking, so I decided to come on up to Piracicaba to work on my research, and good thing because i may be finishing up getting everything prepped and sent off right up until it's time to go. I went back to Curitiba last weekend for my capoeira batizado, finally did the bus tour of Curitiba, and had a little going away party.

I'll be making my last trip out to Anhembi tomorrow to get the rest of my soil samples that need to be packaged up and sent to the US...sad. It was a cool field site. Then this sunday I'll head to Luciana's (my former roommate's) parent's house and they'll take me to the airport on sunday. WOW. and did i mention i still have to finish a final paper for my forest ecology class. hm, so what am i doing blogging? good question.

So overall final musing...well I'm going to miss my brazilian telenovela (soap opera) "Caminho das Indias," and I will miss the excellent bus system both in and between cities. Overall it's been a really good experience, i've learned enough portuguese to be able to get around pretty well, made some great friends, seen a lot of critters and flowers, eaten a lot of tastey food, and collected a whole lot of dirt, scientifically of course. That's really about all you can ask for.

Still Kickin'

Yes, I'm still here, just been a bit negligent lately on the blogging. It's been a busy month or so.

Since the last blog, we had our last couple trips for plant geography. One to Iguassu Falls, where we hiked a 9km trail through the forest and I finally saw a monkey! and trees, lots of trees. we took a boat ride to catch another 2km trail back and we got to kayak in inflatable duckies through the shallow area where the big boat wouldn't pass. one night a few of us ran (well took a van) across the border to Argentina for olives, wine, and a steak dinner,

and the morning before we drove back, spent a couple hours in Paraguay where everything is way cheaper than brazil, but you buy electronics at your own risk. The battery of

Dagma's mp3 player lasts all of 20 minutes a

nd Kelly's flash drive will save everything...except excel files. who knows. I steered clear of electronics and made off with a thermos, a belt, a folding stool for field work, and 40 cent digital watch (which is still functioning thank you). Oh and of course we saw the Falls. Mr. Carbearman liked it.

For our last plant geography field trip, we went to Vila Velha to explore some grasslands. There are a ton of cool rock formations and gigantic pits where basically the ground water ate away at some rocks and created an abyss. No one knows exactly how it happened. But that first step is a doosey. We went down into one that had a sweet waterfall. Yes this was the best class ever.

Somewhere in the middle of that Luciana and I met up with her friend Juliana to visit the

Northeast of Brazil.

We spent a couple days in Jericoacoara riding around the dunes on the back of a buggy and bought lots of crocheted items. From there we spent one night in Canoa Quebrada and saw lots of neat sand cliff

formations and lots of fisherman getting their boats ready for the lobster season.

Also since the last time I wrote I've been to Anhembi, my field site, twice now. I just got back on Monday. The first trip we got 4 plots done and this weekend we got 10 done! woohoo! hurray for help! So now I'm just lacking 3 more plots, soil density for each plot, and a ton of lab work. I'm going back next week just to sieve soils for about week until the students from Piracicaba can come help me finish up my plots. This weekend was especially cool though because we saw a jaguar and an armadillo. battling to the death. ok, not battling to the death, but that would have been cool too. they both were just running across the road. still cool.

Let's see...I also have a new computer "situation" so to speak. You know how your mom always makes you tie you shoelace so you don't trip over it...well that should go for power cords of lap tops as well. After stepping on the cord and slamming my computer into the concrete floor, I'm now left with a corner of the screen functioning. Luckily Rafael lent me an old monitor of his, so at least I'm functional, though now much less portable.

I will also be avoiding clam chowder for an inordinate amount of time now. After all the slightly sketchy street food I've eaten, I came down horribly sick last night thanks to a delicious homemade soup. I don't think I have ever vomited from such great depths before. I think clams came out of my duodenum. It was unpleasant.

Other than that (and having a cold at the moment) things have been more or less good. Classes are almost over, I gave two more presentations in portuguese, my portuguese language class is done, and now is the time for reports and final projects. Whew. It's hard to belief the semester is almost over. And how much more work there still is to do. eek. But on the bright side all things portuguese have become much easier.

Ok, until next time...

Note: bikini wax worse than tattoo.

a most wonderful day

Today I got up, ran salt water through my nose to clear out the toxic sludge, made a banana/walnut pancake and tea for breakfast, finshed my third harry potter book, the last ten pages of omnivores delimma (finally), and went back to bed for a nap. It was glorious. Got back up, rented a movie "O homem que copiava," made dinner, and talked to GW.  I have been a terrible patient lately and finally took it easy today to recover from being sick.  The notorious hacking, turbuculosis type rachel cough is trying to take hold and I'm doing everything I can to ward it off from taking up permanent residence.  

This week I was not taking care of myself, but went on a really great field trip with my plant geography class to Santa Catarina (the state just to the south of Paraná, my

 state). 

The geology, terrain, and climate is much different. We went first to the high mountains with squishy,

 moist soil before heading to lower altitudes where the araucaria live

 (the tall upside-down umbrella trees with tufts on the end). It used to be completely forested in araucaria, but thanks

 popular demand, it's mostly cattle pasture now with disperse patches of forest. 

We did get to visit an award winning araucaria tree on a local's private property. It was over 400 years old.  So far one of my favorite trips. 

another whirlwind adventure

I've been so busy over the last weeks, I haven't really had time to post, so we'll do a bit of a catch up. I'm only home at the moment because I decided to skip capoeira tonight due to a nasty head cold I'm nursing. I'm almost grateful for the excuse to come home early. I've been back and forth to Piracicaba twice since I last wrote, the first time with my advisor Stape to decided where I wanted to collect my soil samples and get info about the land use history. 

Came back to Curitiba and had a trip to the "alta montanhas" or the high mountains of the

 regions (about 1,500 m altitude). They were really soggy due to all the clouds passing through. This is the view from the top. The trees only survive in the large rock crevasses and areas protected from the wind. And appear to be just low shrubby things until you desend down into their magical forest canyon.

The following weekend was the easter holiday, which I spent with Javier (the spaniard) Carolina,

Andres, and a lot of their colombian friends from university in a small town south of Florinopolis called Guarda do Embau.

 Realllly pretty, cool little surfer town. We hiked up to a look out on sunday for the picture of the peninsula beach. you have to cross the river by boat to get to the beach.  We tagged along with the Colombians since they were renting a house there and had an overall great time eating lots of good food and playing charades in portuguese, which by the way is a great way to learn new vocab.

I had two field trips the following week, one on tuesday (leaving my house at 4:30 am) for my nutrition class to collect soils at a loblolly pine plantation (yes i came all the way to brazil to look at loblolly plantations...), which actually turned out to be a good test run for what i was going to

 be doing at my field site. 

Then the second trip for the week on thrusday was taking a boat ride

 (not on this river but on another one with less rocks) from Morretes to Paranagua to get a look at river side forests.   

But unfortunately the night before, we went to a really nice churrascaria, that ended up making (only) me quite sick until I managed to rid myself of it.  So I was quite glad we were riding on a boat and not scaling mountains that particular day.

The same night we got back from that trip, I caught the overnight bus BACK to piracicaba, met up with Maurel, a friend of my roommate who was (insanely) nice enough to come help me collect soils for the long weekend, and headed to Anhembi by bus. (Note at the time I was carrying 1,000 plastics bags which took up my whole climbing bag, two 25cmx25cm squares, a soil auger, a big bag of food for two people for the weekend, three buckets, plus another backpack for my necessities. the bus driver was concerned for me. as was i.  but we made it there, actually just in time to run into a group of retired professors that founded the station and saw a presentation about the history/goals etc for Anhembi, which was really neat.  And we got to eat with them for lunch and got a hat, honey, and a pencil each along with everyone else. woohoo! The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent riding around the station marking plots to sample (all the trees are planted in nice neat little square plots), and then labeling 1000 plastic baggies. It's best to have everything prelabeled ahead of time to have that much less quality time with the mosquitos in the field. 

The next long, hard four days were spent augering soil samples from 7am till about 5pm. The task was made entirely more difficult by the hard, dry, compacted nature of the soils, much less that we were going down to 45cm. woosh. so it was a good learning experience that two people can only get through one plot per day (we did 4 total) and I have 21 plots to sample total. I will be requiring a football team next time I go (which is not this weekend but next). I also learned that it's not a bad idea to wear gloves while collecting forest litter after Maurel found a little scorpion in one plot. 

So I got back from that trip 6:30 am last wednesday morning, wrote a brief report to stape, then went to my portuguese class and capoeira. The next day was thursday...and therefore time for the next field trip to check out galery forests (by the way, at this point my hiking boots have are falling apart to the point only about half of the soles are left). Upon arriving from that field trip I was informed we were going dancing at 11pm. so i went home and slept for about three hours before hand, then got up, got dressed, and went to learn how to dance the forrá, which is sort of the brazilian version of salsa dancing.  waaayyy fun.

Friday I washed cloths, bought food, and cleaned my room. It was wonderful. Friday night I went to the weekly roda for my capoeira group, and went out to eat and have a beer with some folks afterwards, but by the time I arrived at my house I was coming down with a fever and a terrible sore throat and spent the next 12 hours in bed. Got up at noon on saturday, helped luciana and her friends with their english lessons, cleaned the rest of the house, and went to Prof Higas for dinner. Honestly I probably should have just shut myself up in my room and only come out for tea and I probably wouldn't have a cold at the moment. My nice relaxing sunday was spent going to the sunday art and craft market to get a hat i ordered from a lady about 3 weeks ago, came back to call stape to figure out the next sampling trip, and then met up with carolina and andres to go climbing at the gym. Re-reading this, it does sound sort of ridiculous to be doing all of this while trying to recover from a fever.

So today was portuguese class, and yes I skipped capoeira goshdarnit, so i could come home and make dinner for a change and drink some tea and catch up on my blog. so there.  But tomorrow is my nutrition class and then tomorrow night we leave for a long field trip to santa catarina to check out araucaria trees in the mountains until friday morning. And yes I plan on staying home next weekend. if i survive.

man having fun sure is hard work. isso é minha vida intensiva.  tchau todos, boa noite e até mais.

From mountains to rivers

The past couple days were a real whirlwind. Thursday, for my plant geography class, we went to explore the submountain region of the state. After spending the first part of the hike trying to decipher the difference between "nublidade" and "nublino" which I now belief is something like "cloudy" and "foggy" we started our ascent. The problem with hiking with people interested in plants is that we have to stop every two meters because someone is taking a picture of a flower. This makes me ancy...even though I am often part of the problem. 

The other slight problem with this trip was that it was the first time they had taken a class to this particular "sub" mountain. And perhaps the guides didn't realize how long it takes 24 people interested in trees to hike up 500 meters. We stopped a lot in the beginning to talk about the vegetation, but the single-file nature of the trail made it difficult for everybody to get all the info. So, tired of stopping and not hearing what was being said, I wiggled my way up to the front where I could scoot along with the guide and a few others with a faster pace.

 

Overall it was a really cool hike, it's amazing how many plants can live in one tree. I took a picture with one of the biggest trees in the preserve...I think it's a ficus? The other important reason not to stop for too long is that after a couple minutes the mosquitos start to find you. If you're walking you can more or less out run them. 

So we marched on, and finally made it up to the top with a really spectacular view. 

I made it back with the first group around 6pm and started to get a little worried at this point about making it back to catch my bus that night to Piracicaba at 10:15pm. We hung around for a while longer, checked out a swing bridge, and made it back to the university about 9:40pm. 

Luckily my friend Rafael drove me back to my apartment where I had about ten minutes to collect my things and change out of my dirty pants and pack them up for the bus ride. I made it to the bus station with about 3 minutes to spare and caught the overnight bus to Piracicaba. 

I got in about 6am, I grabbed a coffee and a cheezy bread bun in the bus station and then went to meet stape at the university. Changed back into my dirty field pants and boots and we drove out to the Anhembi research station to check out all my possible sampling locations. whoosh. But it was a good trip and I now know more about what I need to do. AND I think we're going to arrange horses to make our way around the site next time. woohoo! Did I mention I love my work?

A distinct lack of honey

This weekend I went on an adventure with my friend Carolina, her boyfriend Andres (both colombians), Mark (the other American exchange student), and Javier (a visiting Spanish doctoral student). 

It made for an interesting weekend due to a lack of a common language between all five of us, we had to keep shifting back and forth between spanish, portuguese, and english for everybody to understand what was going on.  

But anyway, Andres drove us out to Pontal do Sul (where I've had several plant geography classes by this point) and we caught a boat to Ilha do Mel (Island of Honey). Right now is the off season so it was really low key and the prices were about a third of what they are during the holidays. It was 35 reais (~15 bucks) per night in a pousada (local lodging) with cool hammocks hanging around. 

Once we picked a place to stay we got some lunch at a restaurante (with food bom bom bom according to the lady at our hotel (bom=good))  and then headed to the beach to relax and take a swim. The coolest thing about Ilha do Mel is that is still is very natural and there are only sandy footpaths to get around. Half of the island is a natural presearve. After a snooze on the beach we went for a hike up to the "farol" (lighthouse) to get a scenic view. After dinner we played cards and tried to drink some really horrid brazillian wine until we were informed that there was a "farro" (typical live beach music/dancing) at one of the bar/restaurants and headed over there for a caipirinha and some local entertainment. 

The next day we wisened up and took chairs to the very hard beach.  

Andres rented a surf board while Javier gave him lessons and Carolina and I got engulfed in waves trying to take a few pictures. yay waterproof camera! Overall a very successful weekend trip.