Amazon: Animals and Wildlife

Wrapping it up. We're on the home stretch. Only maybe 5 or 6 or 10 more posts about the Amazon. This one's just pictures. Animals. Because it was rainy the first few days I think there were more moths out? I guess. If I were a moth I'd probably not fly in the rain. You know, stay somewhere dry? But maybe they know something I don't.

Amazon 2: Turtle Lodge and Rain

So we have finally gotten to the lodge. It was settled pretty far into the jungle area. We saw plenty of caimans on the way (a cousin of alligators and crocodiles). Lots of fish and birds as well. The lodge was pretty eco conscious, which is why Toby chose it. I couldn't give you the specifics on what made it eco friendly, but I do believe that it was... Brazilians wouldn't ever falsely advertise, right? Haha.

 So the first few days were raaaaaainy! Super rain. We did pretty much all we could, which was pretty much just boat trips. Toby had his awesome Army issue poncho, and I had my H&M, stylish, but not waterproof poncho. It was a wet first few days. See where I'm standing above? This is the level that the water gets to in the wet season. So that house that's about 40 feet below me, floats all the way up here. And that island behind me? It's totally covered by water. We sort of want to go back just to see how different it looks!

 Because all of this wood is covered in water for 6 months out of the year it took on some really pretty characteristics. I'm not going to post them all, but I took like 50 pictures of tree stumps.

 This part of the Amazon basin just got electricity. I'm not 100% sure why they ran these giant cables all the way out into the middle of nowhere, where the population is so low. But they did. I do think it's great for learning and pumping clean water and whatnot, I guess. Our native guide's house that he built with his own two hands had as many electronics as we do. Haha. One guide did say that secondary education was previously completely unavailable, and with electricity the local schools will bring in an online class (errr, I guess they have internet too) so people can come and learn. So that's good. But they "native" lifestyle sure did seem great. The happiest people we're probably ever met.

 Low water. This building was floating on giant logs. Like giant giant logs.

 We did pretty much all we could while it rained, which was mostly boat rides to see wildlife, catch fish, etc. Cold and wet.

 School bus! Here rivers are roads, so why not a boat school bus?

 A little rainy time humor.

 So many cool tree trunks. The top of this tree was full of life, the bottom looked completely dead.

 Why, hello caiman.

 Growing up I had a pet bird, Ben. In a tree at the lodge there was a flock of green parrots living. They looked really close to ole Ben. Except no red head, Ben had red on his head, I believe these guys were all green. They're incredibly camouflaged. As I look at this photo I realized there are like 4 parrots that I can see. Can you find them all?

 We do handstands everywhere we go. This was on a clear part of the day, we went on the lodge's little eco-trek. We were amazed at how dark it got when you walked into the forest. So handstands.

 Toby of the jungle!

 How big was the tree? It was this big! But not really, this was just the buttresses of the roots. It's a characteristic not of one specific kind of tree (that's what I had thought), but something that all of the trees in the area have picked up. The soil isn't very good there (okay, that's what the guide said. I can't imagine that a rainforest would grow in really crappy soil), so they spread their roots like this to stabilize.

 Haha, this is a goofy picture of Toby. Now this tree really was this big. No buttresses about it.

 We slept under this mosquito net in the lodge. Useful, but being that the bed was full of bedbugs, not very useful.

 Pretty good food at the lodge. I'm still convinced that, even though I love American brunch so much and miss it a lot, Brazilians do breakfast really really well. Like really well. Yum.

Hammock building at the lodge. The rain finally stopped. This was the day we headed out to the jungle, I believe!

Our First, but really second, Brazilian Thanksgiving

Okay, so we recently remembered that last year, before we even knew we were moving to Brazil, we came to visit over the US Thanksgiving holiday. So really it's our second Thanksgiving. But the first time we celebrated with North American food. Toby's Mom brought us canned cranberries and canned sweet potatoes. Thank goodness (and thank her!), because cranberries are one of my favorites, and they are nowhere to be found down here. You can get sweet potatoes, but they're a different type. Not orange. Purple on the outside and white on the inside. They taste similar, but wouldn't look quite right, you know?

Toby grilled a little baby turkey on the Green Egg. Turkeys are pretty expensive down here. I'm not sure why. Chickens are SUPER cheap. So I can't figure out why a turkey would cost so much. Oh well. But I thought the photo below was a nice view of our grill on our porch with the ocean behind. Not your usual Thanksgiving. 

Hurricane Sandy

So as everyone or most everyone is aware, Hurricane Sandy is causing havoc on the East Coast of the United States.  As of this post there are 16 people reported dead in the Northeast already and the storm is still going.

The streets are flooded, snow is falling, the winds are extremely high and cities have been evacuated.  The news is reporting that the impact of Sandy is going to top 100 Billion USD in damages.

It is weird to be so far away from the US when something like this is happening.  It almost doesn't seem real. I remember when Katrina happened, I was in deployed and heard about it and read about it in the newspapers, but really had no idea how bad things were.

Mother nature is an amazing thing when you really think about what it is capable of.  The people on the East Coast will be cleaning up for the next year.

Something that I find absolutely amazing is that in the time that we have been here in Brazil, we haven't heard one clap of Thunder or seen one lightning strike.

We have had some bad storms, with lots of rain, flooding and wind, but nothing like the storms we have had in the US.  Storms without Thunder and Lightning?!  Sounds odd doesn't it.

I wonder if there is Thunder and Lightning in other parts of Brazil?