Amazon 1: Getting there

Okay, took me a while to get over the bug bites (bedbugs, ticks, mosquitos and other bugs we're not that familiar with). But I'm back now to show you our trip to the Amazon! I have a few things that I'm going to do specific blog posts on (like Brazil nuts!), but right now I'm going to give you the basic trip overview.

The days we were gone I had the good ole internet posting our itinerary for me, so you probably know what we were up to. If you don't, just look back a few posts, it should be there. While I was in the states for a month, dear ole Toby got to looking on the internet and found us an Amazonian survival vacation. When we lived in the US I was really interested in foraging. You know, finding your food other places than the grocery store. It was a fun challenge there, finding dandelions on the side of the road, random fruit and nut trees around the city. Edible things were hard to come by in Atlanta, it seemed. Well here it's not that exciting. Food grows EVERYWHERE! There are probably 50 mango trees in a three block radius. And nut trees, banana, coconut, fish in the front yard. Food is plentiful here. So I've given up on foraging. Sort of. It's also harder to explain why you are trying to climb your neighbor's tree (I just want to borrow your mangos!) when you don't speak the language that well. I kept thinking, 'just do it! You'll seem like a charming American!'. But I'm not sure that charming is the most common way to describe Americans, so I haven't climbed anyone's trees yet.

But back to the subject. Our Amazonian expedition was a survival trip, we were supposed to catch and find all of our food, trek through the jungle, etc. Below are the first group of pictures.

 So the people we did the tour with suggested no more than 20kg per person. We probably had 20 kg total. We were supposed to be trekking through the jungle the whole time, so we figured the less we packed, the less we had to carry. We ended up being really happy with what we packed, because when we did trek through the jungle we also had to carry our two hammocks. Everything we brought on the trip fit into the green waterproof bag on the bottom left of the photo. Everything we took when we trekked, including the two hammocks, fit into that bag, so we really brought almost nothing.

 So I know you're not supposed to use too many boats and cars and planes when you're trying to be eco friendly while traveling. We used a lot of these things. But I think we offset it by our choice of stay. We took a car to our airport, flew from Recife to Brasilia, to Manaus. Took a van to a boat, the boat to another van, that van to yet another boat which took us to the lodge.

 Our guide said that the in the Manaus region the waterway is much more of a road than the actual roads. People use boats more often for transportation than cars. As seen here, a floating gas station. How neat! There were a ton of boats where we got on our first one. It's the meeting of the Rio Negro and Rio Amazon, so it was a big port area.

 Also home to the famous meeting of the waters. The Rio Negro is darker, coming from a totally different area than the Amazon. It's color is made up of decomposing plants. Along with being darker, it's also cooler and slower. The Amazon river is composed of silt and runoff from...Peru? Shoot. I forgot the country. Anyway, it's made of runoff from the mountain ranges to the West. It is lighter in color, warmer and faster running. Because of all of these factors, when the two rivers meet they don't combine completely for about 15 km. It was really impressive to see in person.

 For Toby's birthday my Dad got him a water filter for this trip. We tried it out at the meeting of the waters. It works great, if any of you are in the market for a water filter I recommend this one. Of course, where we tried it out was a really busy area, so our water still tasted a bit oily. But other than that, great! No...bathroom issues.

 We came in the driest part of the dry season. This means that the boat above is normally covered by 20 feet of water. And the first little pitstop we came to was completely built on really rickety stilts. It looked like something out of a movie set.

 This is where we caught our second boat. The little floating house below comes all the way up to where I took the photo from, in the rainy season.

 Haha, the steps were so far from each other. Pay attention!

 Lots of these floating houses were just floating on old logs. Much cooler in person.

Oh and a fun fact. Amazonas (the Brazilian state) is the 9th largest country subdivision (more or less that means states) in the world. For you USA'ers, a good reference is Alaska. It's number 7 on that list. So Amazonas is big. Big ole big.

Farms 1

So we've been looking at some farms lately. Just for fun, seeing some local real estate. They're super beautiful, and the countryside is so different than the beach. Also it sort of gives us a view into a different lifestyle. Sort of the farmer/gardener, 'interior' (that's what they call the area of the country inland) life. We both enjoy gardening (okay, I like to garden, Toby likes to watch), and working with our hands, so maybe someday this will be something we do. The first farm we looked at was a pousada in it's previous life, a little hotel. Now it houses a family who maintain the land and make a small profit on the produce they grow. After touring the property, which was expansive and full of fun plants, cows and little surprises, the owners sent us away with more produce than we knew what to do with. Pretty fun.

 These were the family's little gardens, this one has lettuce, chives and cilantro. In the background there are some of the hotel rooms. What a fun straight little garden. Not exactly how I grow mine.

 Another part of the garden, cilantro and lettuce, and the back of the main house. The bigger part, which you can't see was two stories. Super cute. I can't remember what that tree is in the foreground, but the back right is a mango. This property had 12 or so.

 Another view. On second thought, that tree in the foreground right is some sort of citrus. I think the foreground left was a lime. Maybe. Lime trees here look different than the ones I'm used to.

 We found a whole stack of these old hotel check in pages on the ground. I wish I would have taken a ton of them, since they were just sort of in a trash pile. I did pick up one, and the check in date was 1980. Neat!

 Hahaha, I have no idea what was going on with their chickens, but they were looking pretty rough. Someone give those chickens a sweater!

 Oooh, peeling paint. Pretty right? I would have taken this building in any of those colors!

 Toby and some type of hundred year/agave plant. The picture doesn't quite do it justice, it was around 10 feet tall.

 Another one.

Farms 2

Okay, I just realized that I wrote these drafts out of order. Farms 2 is going before farms 1. Whoops.

Either way, we've been looking at farm properties. Mostly because we like to look at real estate, secondly because we like farms. From the point that the photo below was taken you can see the ocean, although you're pretty far (45 minute drive inland) from it. It was a really beautiful property. We loved it.

Pineapples!!! Apparently pineapples take 18 months to grow (from planting to harvest) and like to grow on hillsides. We can't figure out why they're so cheap. 18 months? That's such a long time! But maybe they're cheap because they take up that farming real estate (hillside) that would otherwise be unused? Who knows. Delicious either way.

 This property had over 150 palm trees that delivered most of the income for the farm (along with the pineapples) but on the side they also grew pretty much every other tree fruit you could think of, and lots of crops on the ground. In the background of this picture you can see macaxeira, a root vegetable, in the foreground corn. The farmer who works the land made a joke with us that this was Brazilian corn, not US corn, so it was only going to grow this tall, not 10 feet tall like in the US. I laughed a little at that. Fertilizers. Hah. On the left and right in the photo are mango trees.

 Baby palm trees. These types of coconut-bearers have a fruit bearing expectancy of about 20 years, so they were just replanting the land.

 Brazilian corn. So short you could take a picture over it. Just kidding. I think it was just young. I'm sure it'll grow to the height that it's supposed to grow to. Which I have no idea what that is.

This is the macaxeira, with the house in the background.

Farms Three

Okay, you'll read my apologies in the further posts. This post is called Farm 3. But there are two posts that were supposed to come before it, but they're really coming after it. Same thing. You get the idea.

So this farm used to be a nursery, and also had a field of cajus and maracuja. Okay, so I don't really remember. But two fields of fruit trees. Very neat. I really loved the nursery. It was sort of dilapidated, and out of use, but still had lots of plants, and a lot that looked like they were very happy that people stopped caring for them (read: plants gone wild!). 

Also, as you'll notice, there was a friendly cow at this farm. Almost all the farms we'd looked at were huge properties, many acres (or hectacres here), so the majority of them rent their land out to cows. All three farms we looked at rented out their land. Most of the cows here are Brahmas. Sort of the same kind that are in India? I have no idea. Not the black and white milk cows you see in the US.

 Mmm, pretty right? The stems and leaves were sort of beigey grey. Nature, you're such a designer!

 Nursery gone wild! Orchids galore!!! I wanted so badly to steal so many plants, since they looked like most of them were left to the earth anyway.

 Don't worry plants, I'll rescue you!!! Come live at my house!

 What in the world kind of plant is this? Little white bubbles on their stems?

 Hidden behind the relatively small mango tree was one of the houses on the property. Pretty tiny.

Hi friendly cow. It was licking my bag like crazy! I didn't have any snacks or anything either, I have no idea why he was licking. Anyway, he distracted us all (me, Toby and the guy showing us the land) and BAM the cow behind him (see him in the picture sneaking up?) jumped up and started....errr....seducing the other one! Just like that! Oh nature.

Another cool thing about this place was that we drove pretty much straight up (at an angle I'm sure would be illegal anywhere else) for a really long time, and there was still this little lake/pond way up there. I have no idea how water stays up so high.

First Non-Family Visitor!

Last week we had our first friend come visit (oh parents, don't worry, you are our friends too). We took her to all the sights we could think of. Here's a rundown (you know, so you know what you're missing out on).

We took her to Porto de Galinhas, where the fish eat out of your hands (you're not supposed to feed them)

And you can snorkel there too. The water is much clearer there than at our house.

And there is much sealife to be seen. You're not supposed to torment the wildlife, so we gave him a kiss to make him feel better.

One of our favorite things about Porto is watching the vendors. There are tons, usually with very common stuff, but every now and then you come across something original. We saw some eagles made out of shells. We should have taken a picture of them.

And we took her to the Sao Jose market in downtown Recife. Fruits and veggies are waaaay cheaper there, and it's full of touristy stuff.  Sorry for the horrible picture!

And we gave her caldo de cana, which is fresh squeezed sugar cane. It is deeeelicious. If you like sugar water. Which I do. Our friend drank some, but I finished it.

We should have gotten her this chesburg. But we didn't.

Oh and we went for a ride on the boat. It's in ship shape. We've moved it to another location and have lended it out to a local fisherguy in trade for fresh fish every now and then. And we still get to take her out whenever we want. 

Deck needs a little work though.

Oh look at handsome captain Toby!

And we went to another market in Jaboatao, but I don't know the name of it. There's a large blue church there, that's all I know. It might even be in Recife, I don't know if it's before or after the "Welcome to Jaboatao" sign. 

And of course, to Olinda, for a little heritage. We need to read a book on all these sights. I had to look up why it's a World Heritage sight. And I don't think I found the answer. Because it's old? Does that sound right?

Olinda, where they never sell the same paint color twice.

We taught her about the Frevo. Not much though, just as much as the change we had leftover would buy us. But these kids were pretty good.

And ended the trip with a dooouuuble raiiiinbooow! How magical. This was our view out of our windowless back room. It was all soaking wet from the rain. Turns out it's a good idea to have a window.

I've taken a ton of pictures lately and have some more substantial posts coming up. But for now I'm getting ready for a big work announcement (which involves me sprucing up my other blog). If you're interested in finding out first hand, you can follow the announcement in two tweet chats (just follow #talkNT). Otherwise, I'll be back later this week with posts about campaign season, fishing and mooooore!