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?