COUNTRY: Brazil
PROGRAM: GapBreak
PROJECT: Wildlife Conservation & Youth Work
WRITTEN BY: Alice Clarke
We dropped off the face of the Earth but now we're back - The past few weeks in Brazil
There is so much to fill this post with seeing as I haven't written anything for 3 weeks, so I hope you don't mind a lengthy read.
Part 1 - First 3 weeks separated :(
Felix, Maddy, Belinda and I have only just returned to Florianopolis after 3 weeks in Curitiba (and 4 days in Rio of course but that's a story for part 2). We left on the 30th of September and our first day in Curitiba was... eventful. When we arrived at the bus terminal Rafaela and Marcela greeted us and loaded Rafaela's fairly average sized car with our 4 tightly packed packs. For "lunch" (it was actually about 3pm) we went to Jacobina; an ecclectic restaurant that serves some typically Brazilian food with a menu that changes according to the day. For dessert Maddy defied her mother and got brownie, I tried tapioca ice cream and, Felix and Belinda shared guava cheesecake and chocolate cake. Rafaela was trying to get us to the sanctuary by 5 as that is when the doorman (he does other things too apparently) Alan officially finishes work. Now a quick point about the sanctuary - it's pretty much in the middle of nowhere; 30 km from Curitiba and 3 km from the small town on the other side of it.
When we got off the freeway we took the only dirt road you can take to get there. Unfortunately it was no longer a dirt road but a mud road and Rafaela's week old car got stuck. Despite Felix's best efforts at manliness the car would not budge and Rafaela was getting more and more stressed because she could only reach her insurance company in Curitiba who still had to come all the way to this unmarked road and pull us out. But of course the day was saved by two knights in shining cowboy hats, riding atop their trusty tractor. After being towed to the sancturary it was far too late for a tour or anything other than a brief orientation and a delicious improvised dinner of spaghetti and tuna sauce crafted by Felix and Belinda.
The place we stayed in Curitiba was like a little apartment. It was the top level on a 3 story building that contained the kitchen for storing and preparing animal food and a room for birds that were sick or just didn't have a space in the averies yet. There were 2 bedrooms with connecting bathrooms and a kitchen/living/dining area. It was a very nice place even if the kitchen was too small for 4 people to help cook and the internet rarely worked. Investigating the myriad of food we had in our cupboards and fridge was a highlight of our first evening; mountains of pasta, a slab of milk, OJ, grape juice, coke and guarana, popcorn, chocolate, pringles... we were set for life. Apart from the lack of vegetables and tea.
Our first real day on the project was incredible to say the least. Marcela came to give us a tour at 9 but because Beto the biologist was there he joined us and gave us a little extra information about all of the animals. They have over 190 species at the sanctuary, most of which are birds - many species of monkey, a tapir, sloths, pumas, small cats, tamaduas, giant anteaters, toucans, macaws, parrots, ducks and geese, harpie eagles, and of course jaguars just to name a handful. They have two species of tortoise which we got to pick up and hold; learning how to distinguish males and females - whether their undershell is concave or flat - and how to tell the difference between the species - aside from a slight colour and size difference, one had an extra lip of shell on it's underside. We also met the evil chicken-like bird that occupies some territory in the top corner of the sanctuary. Once you enter he follows you, running behind, waiting for the perfect moment to jump up and attack your head. Maintaining eye contact is the only was to sort of stop him.
After our tour we got down to business. At this project, each day you go with a one of the seven animal carers and help them with their animals. Ana Paula, the vet at the sanctuary gathered us all in her office and decided who we would go with. Maddy went with Elisangela and fed and cleaned two of the Jaguar enclosures. She loved that they had a toilet so they could flush the poo after cleaning. They also cleaned a few of the bird enclosures. Felix went with Francisco. Unfortunately we were too late to assist with cutting fruit as it is Francisco's domain - sharpening knives and cutting his arm hair with them because they're so sharp, telling us not to cut ourselves and showing us his various scars. Fransisco cleans the tapir and tortoise enclosures and the parrot house with 20 odd cages. Belinda was with Marco who looks after many of the monkey species in the sanctuary. She got to hold these orange monkies with beards and fed and cleaned the tapir enclosure.
He also showed her one of the many bridges in the forest area of the sanctuary that leads to his house on the property. While the others were busy getting soaked by the pressure hoses and splashed with poo and fruit, I went with another biologist, Willian. We went around to a handful of bird cages - with the larger phesant-like birds in them - and looked for eggs. There were only 4 to clean, lable and put away in the incubators. He also introduced me to the youngest jaguars who are relatively friendly and we touched them through the fence. He also took me into the small bird avery and climbed to the lookout. The view from anywhere high on the proeperty is just amazing. It spans for an impossibly long way with enclosures, forest and houses of some of the workers.
The rest of our days at the santuary followed much the same pattern but mostly always with different animals to feed as we rotated through the carers. None of them spoke English but we got the basics - eu ajudo?, lavar, não amigo and agressivo. Mostly always said incorrectly; but they got the idea. Throughout the first week we got to touch and hold various animals - toucans, monkies, tamanduas, tapir and sloths. We helped cut up fruit most mornings and sometimes unloaded the truck and sorted the haphazard crates into tidy fruit groups. It didn't take us long to start eating the perfectly good fruit that they got crates of every single day - pinapples, papayas, apples, watermelon, grapes, bananas, you name it. At least once or twice a day the carers would take a break to eat some of the fruit too. I miss it now that I'm back in Flori.
Our first weekend we ventured in to Curitiba. Instead of paying for a direct transfer we decide to take the bus from Campos Grande do Sul - the town 3km away. To get there we could walk or get Alan to drive us. Alan drove us, laden with our weekend bags, in his tiny, Grandfather's VW beetle that had a bouncy backseat, on the dirt road (dry now thankfully) but still riddled with potholes. Surprise we survived that short adventure, we arrived in Curitiba to find long ATM lines and others not working. After a stress-vanishing sugar cane juice (for me) we walked to our hostel. Hostel Roma was a nice hostel across the road from a park, shopping centre and a short(ish) walk from the bus terminal. We were too preoccupied with the free wifi to really care about anything else and it was hard to tear ourselves away in order to satisfy Felix and Maddy's desire to hit the town. We went to Mustang Sally; a Mexican/American bar/restaurant and enjoyed "margaritas" that were nothing like margaritas, and an ultimate nachos. Much to Maddy and Felix's dismay I was too tired to continue on to a club we hadn't found yet and so we walked home.
We were up bright and early on Sunday for a tour of Curitiba. We got distracted by a market on the way to meet Marcela and ended up having to get her to meet us because it was so enormous. She introduced us to Ramon - a Spanish guy who would be joining us at the sanctuary for the rest or our time there. He was not at all up to our expectations of a hulking, Spaniard with a flowing mane of hair and a stunning mustache. He was in fact 30ish, bald and had glasses. We all got separated and so began the pattern of waiting for ages for everyone to regroup - it happened far to much over the next weekends. For lunch we had "The World's Best Burger". It was OK. Better than their iced tea which was literally just cold tea with no embellishments; not even a simple lemon slice. After this we FINALLY got to the tour bus. In Curitiba there is a bus that goes past and stops at many of their attractions. Your ticket gets you to 4 of the stops but we only got to 2 - the Botanic Gardens and Oscar Niemeyer Museum.
The whole day was the beginning of our unfortunate habit of leading Marcela on a wild goose chase whenever she was trying to help us. After a walk in the Pope garden and brief sit in the park where some people were doing Cirque du Soleil style acrobatics we made our way back home by befriending some English speaking people who sort of knew where they were going and sort of knew where our hostel was in relation to their house. Although we planned to go out on Sunday night we were all too tired s owe bought a bottle of vodka and attempted a room party. This rocking party consisted of me attempting to teach the non-Melbournites how to juicy wiggle, playing "I have never...' and, brainstorming dares we'd never do. What a rager eh? On Monday we were going home but first me and Maddy made it our mission to collect as many of the prostitute advertisement cards as we could. Rewind. Explain. Throughout Brazil they have these bright teal hemispheres that have phones in them and in Curitiba, especially near the centre, they are filled with small paper slips advertising prostitutes (quite nicely arranged I might add). Although it was annoying Belinda and Felix, we were having a ball as we marvelled at how fast the "pimp" could refill them and then found him refilling them as we came back from lunch. The others came round too as we sorted through all 820 we had collected (75 different ones) and played XXX Factor.
On Friday we went on a hike with Luciano, some of his friends and Ramon. I win the prize for stuggling the most: getting insanely muddy, bitten, falling over in the rivers and on rocks. In my defense the trail was basically vertical and the steps were like a metre high - definitely a workout for all of our legs. Towards the end we pushed through the wall by thinking of things that were harder than the trail including finding a nice bra that's bigger than an A cup, taking public transport in Florianopolis and finding peanut butter in Brazil. At the top/end of the trail Maddy and Felix took a dip in the pool at the end of the waterfall and slid down the natural waterslide created by slime on the rock face. When we finished we all went and got pastels (Brazilian pastry) on the way back to the sanctuary.
On Saturday it was Oktoberfest time and the guys at the sanctuary got a transfer to Curitiba so we could catch our tour bus at 9am while Jed, Holly and Tom got to relax for a bit before getting their bus to Blumenau. Felix, Maddy, Belinda and I, and the rest of the group which included people from Germany, Mexico, Holland, France and Brazi, had lunch at a "german" buffet. Felix wasn't too impressed with the food that was a Brazilian take on traditional German cuisine but he still managed to eat a couple of plates worth of food. When we got to Blumenau we watched the Oktoberfest Parade (in our serparate groups - attempting to find each other in the huge crowd of people by doing the emu just did not work) and the Curitiba group headed to the official Oktoberfest party while the Florianopolis group had something to eat.
The Oktoberfest in Blumenau is the second largest in the world after the one in Germany (apparently) but we would not have known because we pretty much stayed in the same spot for most of the night with members of the group leaving at different stages. The Curitiba group banded together with two girls from Germany - Sabine and Nina and taught them English drinking songs. The reunion between the groups rivaled the reunion between Peter and Shadow at the end of Homeward Bound... but 12 times. It was a great night until we had to go our serparate ways at about midnight. Our bus was supposed to leave at 2AM back to Curitiba but Maddy and Felix got lost, delaying our departure by an hour and a half. Thus we were late getting back to meet Marcela on Sunday.
Our final week at the sanctuary saw photos, tree planting, a lot of walking and saying goodbye. On Wednesday we went with the tractor guys (who we thought just rode around on a tractor all day and didn't actually do anything) to feed the "pigs" - peccaries to be exact and they're way more interesting than just pigs; they're in the Melbourne Zoo! Afterwards we planted trees in a burnt section of the forest. We headed back into the sanctuary and to our surprise, stopped at the greenhouse again and loaded the trailor full of trees. We asked "hoje?" and were greeted with nods. But then our horror was put to rest as they said "oh nao, amanha". Thank goodness!!! After that Lee took us around some of the walking tracks and showed us a "secret"way of getting back to our room. On our last day Alan took us on another walk and let us into the animal cages to take photos and say goodbye. Lots of fun was had with the tamanduas and sloths and a tapir who lay down so we could scratch his belly and didn't get back up. Alan and Marcela freaked out because they thought it was dying but as soon as we left it got back up. Willian took us to Luciano and Cris' house to plant our trees with a sign that says our name and where we're from. Everyone except Felix struggled a bit with digging the hole for our seedling to go in but it was all good in the end. Rafaela picked us up on Thursday afternoon and after saying our goodbyes to Alan, Ramon and Willian we forlornly departed.
While we were living it up in Curitiba, the others were holding down the fort in Florianopolis. From what I can gather from their reports, they were in the preliminary stage of all the goals we have to achieve while working there and it was hard for them to feel as though they weren't doing anything useful because they'd only play with the kids every day instead of completing our projects - hard evidence of our contribution. The first weekend separated they went to a uni party with Tom's brothers. They began English lessons and found it challenging to be seen as a teacher to the kids after we were introduced as playmates. They were involved in numerous parties and celebration with ours and other children centres and joined in samba and caipoeira performances.
Part 2 - Rio
Though we left at roughly the same time from Florianopolis and Curitiba, we arrived at vastly different times due to my, Felix, Maddy and Belinda's stop over in Sao Paulo. We met up at the hostel after we got there and went shopping for a few lunch and dinner items before being convinced by Alex (a guy at the hostel desk) to get loco at LapaLoca that night. We got discounted entry and the girls got free caipirinhas until midnight (which were awful and we shared with the guys). Before that though we went to the night market where we had a look around, got dinner and Holly and I sang 'Breaking Free' from Highschool Musical in a small kareoke bar to a standing ovation. We had a dance, we had a drink (or a few) and then we went home. A bit of drama getting home after there was a problem with my card and when I went back down Holly, Belinda and Jed had left without me. Not wanting to pay to get back in, or stay on the street by myself, I got a cab home but couldn't tell them my address because I had lost the piece of paper and my phone had stopped working. Such a shamozzle. But taxi drivers are suprisingly good at problem solving (screw engineering I'm going to be a taxi driver to utilise my problem solving ability) and we found my way home; safe and sound. Due to the lack of clean water that you did not have to buy, many of us were in a bad state on Saturday morning. But we all ventured down to the beach, had a dip in the icy water and then attempted to visit sugarloaf for sunset. After walking for about half an hour and only being less than half way there, we took a couple of cabs to the entrance only to discover there was a really long line. The sun had pretty much set and it was getting cloudy so we decided it wasn't worth it and so went to get churos and mediocre corn on the cob while we figured out what to do next. We decided to go to a free art exhibit of Yayoi Kusama.
Sunday was my birthday (woo) and I was thankful for the relatively tame night before as I felt much better than I felt on Saturday. Tom headed off early to go to the national park and the rest of us left later with the intention of hiring bikes and going for a ride. Instead we headed down to the Copa-Copacobana and had a walk along the beach, walked to Ipanema and then to the Sunday 'Hippie Markets' a block or two away from the beach. After we ate and had a look around before Jed and Holly headed home and Felix, Maddy, Belinda and I went to Lagoa to Mil Fruitas ice cream shop. After about half an hour of tastings, Maddy finally made up her mind and we got to have a short walk around the lake before getting a taxi home. Waiting for me on the rooftop of the hostel was a banner reading "feliz anniversario", balloons, cake, fruit salad and passionfruit juice. It was a great celebration before we had to get ready for the football (soccer) game at
Maracanã Stadium that night. We got picked up and taken to the game with an old Canadian man who was quite a character. We also met other football fans from the Netherlands, England and Australia. I still don't know what the teams were (they were both black and white) but it was an exciting game that ended in a draw 2 all. Upon returning to the hostel, Alex was just finishing and offered to take us to this restaurant that specialised in pastels. It was so good!! They had pastels with all different fillings and we all tried a few different ones as well as having dessert pastels. The last day in Rio reached 38 degrees. Holly and I had a coconut on the beach and then went to Christ the Redeemer with Felix, Maddy and Tom, Jed slept off the all nighter that he, Maddy and Felix had pulled and Belinda tried to go to Santa Teresa but couldn't because the tram was not running as it was a public holiday. We finished the day on the beach before Jed, Tom and Holly had to get their flight home. For the remaining hours, the rest of us met a Brazilian/Ukranian man who showed us the best caipirinha in Brazil (it was pretty good) and had dinner where Maddy got "chicken surprise" and almost made us miss our transfer because it took so long to come out.
Part 3 - This week in Flori
This week at the Children Centre seemed to be quite productive. We finished planting the vegetable garden on Tuesday and now just need to paint it. The morning group bought seedlings of tomato, lettuce, beetroot, herbs and cabbage, prepared most of the soil and planted a few while the afternoon group finished the soil preparation and planting. On Tuesday night my host family threw a surprise party for my birthday. All the group made an effort to come even though it was a bit out of the way and it was a nice night with dinner, cake and a little movie they made about my time here. On Wednesday both groups taught an English class. In the morning the girls taught numbers and played a game of bingo that was unfortunately cut short and the boys in the afternoon taught basic phrases and greetings. Since classes seem to be quite inconsistent in terms of which kids are in the class, we have developed the goal to be not making sure they retain every piece of information we teach them but instead creating the association in their mind that learning English is fun. We felt accomplished because we got Rafael, a shy kid in the morning class who didn't want to participate when we had the students spelling the numbers 1-20 on the board, to spell nineteen. We also taught Octavio, one of the more proficient in English, to say "you're welcome" when someone says "thank you".
For the girls Wednesday afternoon brought Brazilian bikini shopping. Everyone here wears very skimpy bikinis with bather bottoms that are basically thongs and Holly had made the decision that we all had to buy one before we leave. On Thursday we had a meeting with Grazi so we were all there from 12 and had a caipoiera class and joined in the art class before we left at 3.30. Friday is game day at the kid centre so in the morning, while Jed and Tom played the kids' version of cricket, I planned some things for our other goals including the tyre playground and possible projects for when it is raining. This weekend the weather has turned nice after a rainy week and on Saturday the girls had a successful bikini shopping adventure and we all went to dinner at Guacamole; this mexican restaurant in Floripa where there are tequila cowboys with tequila in holsters and shot glasses strapped to their chest like bullets. On Sunday we all (minus Tom) and Belinda and Maddy's host sister Dani went rafting.Unfortunately none of us got a group photo in our dorky rafting gear but we looked hilarious. After rafting we had hot showers and went to Lagoa for a late lunch, sarong shopping (where Maddy tried unsuccessfully to barter) and a browse around the markets. It was very windy and we all got stung by flying sand as we walked past the inland dunes.
Unfortunately this was our last weekend together in Florianopolis for the next month as Jed, Tom and Holly are of to Curitiba next Saturday.
No comments:
Post a Comment