Life is Good

In our apartment we have this one guy, he's a worker guy, he cleans and takes care of the lawns and such. He is a really incredible guy. When we moved here we didn't get our stuff (we shipped everything we own) for about 4 months. He delivers our mail to us, and I guess at some point he saw inside our house to our kitchen, and realized we had nothing to cook with. So he started bringing us food. It was the gosh darn sweetest thing. He brought us probably three or four soup/bean dishes, and he was super proud that we were getting our first tastes of Brazilian cuisine from him. What I'm saying is he's a super nice guy.

Any time I ask him how he's doing, he's always answered with one of these:
'tudo tranquilo' -everything's tranquil/peaceful/in order
'tudo otimo' - it's all great!

So pretty much, life is as good as it can get. This guy works 12 hour shifts, rides his bike to and from work, and doesn't really make that much money. But seriously he is like a little Buddha. He's so nice. Every now and then I get a little worried about life, like am I making enough money, I'm not learning portuguese very fast, you know normal stuff that people worry about. But man, talking to this guy just sets me in the right mood. This morning I went for a swim (I'm trying to get in our pool more often, in the case that we ever end up without a pool, I don't want to regret my time with one) and on my way up I saw him and said hi. He said hi back, and asked me how I'm doing. I said 'tudo tranquilo!'. He said 'oh your portuguese is getting so good!'. I told him that I learned that little word from him and what does he say? 'Life is a school'. Buddha, I swear! This guy always makes my day.

-Side note, I found that breadfruit on the ground the other day. Free fruit, that's what I'm talking about! I waited until the next day to cut it up and it was just mush by then. Are they the sort of thing you need to eat right when you pick it? Anyone know about breadfruit?

This Pink Flowering Tree is a _______ tree.

Not sure, but it sure is purty! On my list of things to buy when I A) make a little bit more money, B) finish reading all the books I've already bought but haven't read, is a book about Brazilian wildlife. I really enjoy knowing about things like this, and I'm not good enough with Portuguese to look all of it up on the internet yet. For now, I did find this website, it's pretty informative. HERE

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 4: In the Jungle Part 1

Okay, the amount of posts I have is getting ridiculous. Post 4, part 1? Haha. And 40 pictures in one post? Hot dang, this is too much. I will try and downsize. Okay, I cut out a few pictures, but there's still a lot. Sorry about that. So much good stuff! How could I get rid of any of it?

 Okay, I know it looks like I'm cutting down a tree in the rainforest, which sounds like a really awful thing to do. But the shelter we built will stand for like 10 years, said the guide. So it's something that's going to stick around. And get used a lot.

 Sturdiness test. It's sturdy enough for me. But when you attach 6 hammocks...things are different.

 Checking the height.

 We used the part of the tree where the branches come out (don't know the name of that part. I would call it the crotch, but it seems like there must be a better word), and then added extra security with jungle vines.

 Check out that home!!!

 Did you know you can start a fire with two batteries and steel wool? Part of the expedition was learning how to survive. So learning to make fire was part of it. Using batteries and steel wool sort of seemed like cheating (if I were surviving, what are the chances of steel wool and batteries coming up?), but it's how our native guide chose to start the fire. We challenged him to use the flint, and he made that work too. As far as making fire without tools, I guess I'm still in the dark.

 Good thing there weren't any food and safety people around. Washing chicken in the river... probably not the most sanitary thing ever.

 Using the water pump again. Our guides brought two 5 gallon jugs of water to our camp. But to our second camp we hiked for about 7 hours. We didn't bring those large jugs, because it would have been a little ridiculous, but I wonder, if we hadn't had our water pump, what would we have done? Not hiked?

 Super fun fact: we brought a gun for protection against really scary animals like jaguars! Just being somewhere where you need to bring a gun for protection (okay, our old house in Atlanta doesn't count) seemed very exotic to me. If we hadn't only had 3 bullets I might have protected myself from this giant beetle.

 Yum, dinner. Piranha stew and chicken.

 No one told us about the amazing variety of crazy looking fish (I mean, come on, look at the expression on his face!) we would find in the rivers. So when Toby caught this one, with just a piece of line and a hook, we were terrified. What a crazy fish! Doesn't his facial expression remind you of Eyore? It's like a big frown. Like he's saying: Well, I guess I got caught. Oh well.

 Toby wasn't excited or anything to have caught the largest fish of the trip so far.

 Large fish. Small guide.

 Unfortunately, this was not one of the nights we had to provide for ourselves, so this big ole guy got thrown back in.

 Okay, see what I mean about fishing with just a line? Brazilian fishermen crack me up. Just a line!

 Cachaca shots for dinner. And maybe to disinfect our stomachs.

 The bathroom.

 We went on a night tour and fish were jumping in the boat by the dozens (okay, maybe 10 total). I dont' know if it was the light or what, but seriously every other minute another fish jumped in.

 Time for bed! Bug spray it up!

 For about an hour while we were getting to sleep we were terrified the whole shelter was going to collapse. The guides said that it had happened before. One of us would get in and be fine, then the next person would get in their hammock and the first person would be sitting on the floor. Every time we added more weight we had to readjust the hammocks. Then when we were all about comfortable one of the larger branches that was holding us up snapped, so we all got up, fixed that, readjusted again, and finally slept.

 Fried bananas and coffee. What cracks me up about this is that our guide actually measured the coffee. In the middle of the jungle, I don't care how much coffee you put it, just throw some in!

 Check out that ant hill! Of course, again, our guide was really small, so he probably makes it look a lot bigger too.

 This fine specimen was called a Monkey Comb. Our guides said that when you hear the 'ooo-o-ooo, ee-ee-eee!' in the jungle it's the monkeys scratching themselves with these. Unfortunately I didn't hang on to one. Would have come in hand after all the bug bites.

 Speaking of bug bites. This is an ant...nest? Ant house? Ant shelter. Whatever. They said hey, put your hand on it, let the ants crawl all over you, then smush them all. They smell when you smush them and it acts as a bug repellent. We all did it, no ant bites (but still tons of bug bites, so maybe it was just a joke to see if the gringos would do it) but you had the horrible feeling that bugs were crawling all over you for a while afterwards.

Bamboo jungle whistles, incase we got lost.

And the last thing. So because it was survival they taught us how to find food. Food being grubs. They live inside these certain coconuts and you get them out and eat them. They tasted sort of coconut-y. Which was I guess pleasant. I could think of worse things to eat if I were starving.