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.
