I'm Coming home.

Can you believe, six months have come and gone already! I am currently sitting at the airport at the boarding gate writing to you.  I had money burning in my pocket so I just did a mad shopping dash through the airport to see if it was possible to buy every last thing in Brazil while still bringing home the  same bags in which I arrived ...   Plus one small carry on :)  I spent my last two days, one laying by the pool to get as much sun as I possibly could before I return to the cold... Only to burn sensitive areas in my new Brazilian bikini... And today I went to school and hung out at the laboratory saying good bye to my classmates.    It has been a rough couple days saying goodbye to everyone but I know I will see them again soon... Especially when the World Cup comes to town! I will post again upon my return back to the snow.  Its hard to think it is all over now.

Pre -Going Away Party Post

I am pretty lucky to have met such good people here in Brazil.  You can now count the hours and I will be on a plane back home to Canada but today is my going away party.  My roommate is quite a special one for letting me use her house for the pool party and let people spend the night.  Friends from all the cities I have visited are coming today and I could not be happier.  But I dread tomorrow morning when I must say good bye.  I am sad to leave, and happy to be coming home and so my emotions cancel each other out and I am in this weird limbo stage.  But I am enjoying my last few days the Brazilian way! We have multiple kinds and cuts of meat to put on the BBQ, salads, fruits and cases of beer chilling in the fridge. We were a little nervous this morning when we woke up as the sun decided to stay asleep for the first time in a month, of course on my pool party day, but as I write this, it looks like it may join us in the party! And best of all, my paper that I had been working on for the last two months is finished!! Now I can party care free :)

The Amazon!

I landed in Manaus in the middle of the night and found a cozy corner of the airport to get a little bit of sleep before I headed to the dock to catch my boat.  I fell for the biggest tourist trap the moment I stepped out of the airport doors.  Apparently in Manaus there are two taxi companies, the white taxis and the black taxis.  The plan was to get a taxi to the doc, a simple ten minute journey, no big deal.  I walked out and There was a nice man standing there and he asked if I needed a taxi, I thought wow this was really easy, score one for me! He lead me to his taxi, a nice black one, very clean.  Little did I know, black taxis were for the rich and important and my little ten minute drive ended up costing me $R58 about $35... On the way back at the end of the trip, it was $R17... Anyways I made it to the port a little over two hours before my boat was to depart and I was able to see the tail end of a party going on from the night before ... Yes in they party until after the sun comes up, and even after as you go farther north! When it was time to board the boat I was welcomed with coffee and breakfast, and shown my living quarters for the next four days.  After a tour of the boat, there were only three rooms and I was told it was just going to be me and another traveller! There were more men working on the boat than travellers! There was the captain and the captains mate, our tour guide, and the chef... I felt very special! Once the other traveller, a man from Germany, boarded the boat we disembarked and sailed away along the city's edge to the meeting of the waters.  This place is very cool as two different rivers, the Rio Negro and the Amazon River, both having different pHs, different water temperatures, and different velocities, and different colours, run into each other but stay side by side.  You look to your left and you see the brown water of the Amazon River, you look to your right and you see the black waters of the Rio Negro, a very cool sight.  After lunch, where I ate my first fish as its eyes were staring at me, we headed to our first trek into the forest to see the giant lilly pads that grow within the forest.  Over the next four days I was able to swim with pink dolphins, catch and then eat piranhas, hunt for alligators with my camera then touch them, spend the morning walking through the rainforest where I saw my first tarantula, poison flowers and a tree that looked like an anaconda... My heart stopped in that moment.... I spent the night in a hammock sleeping in the rainforest, and visited a family, a village, and an Indian tribe to see how they all live and adapt within the Amazon forest.  My first night was quite cool as we had to make an emergency stop and find a hiding spot among the rocks to dock the boat as a rainforest thunderstorm, pelted us.  It was intense but I was so happy to be witnessing the storms of the Amazon.  The last stop on the trip was to see a rubber farm to see how rubber was harvested and produced, the lifeblood of Manaus during the last century.  A European would buy the land and hire the Brazilians to work the farm.  Learning about what it took to make rubber and the intense heat and working conditions... It was a rough job. Once we docked the boat, I had a few hours to kill before my flight left later that night and so I travelled downtown to the famous opera theatre in Manaus, known across the country.  It was a beautiful building created by the Europeans but using Brazilian influences.  I walked around the area a little bit more visiting a few more notable buildings in the area, stopped for dinner and ice cream, and took the white taxi to the airport to catch my flight home.

Lençóis Maranhenses, Maranhão, Brazil.

I am back from my trip and things are really well.  My first stop on the trip took me to North East Brazil   so that I could see Lençóis Maranhenses, a national park filled with sand dunes and lagoons.  I arrived at the airport in Sao Luis and at 5am I took a bus four hours east to get to the little town entering the park.  I checked into my hotel and immediately booked an off road tour to visit the sand dunes later that day.  After exploring the hotel premises, a swim, and lunch it was time to head to the tour! I had been dreaming of this moment for months and now it was finally here! The vehicle that picked us up was a 12 person off-road 4x4 dune buggy.  It was a gigantic truck but where the bed of the truck was supposed to be, we sat.  Although there were no sides just seats and one bar to hold onto and man, did you have to hold on! We travelled 12 km across sand and fields, threw desert brush, by cacti bumping and jumping all along the way though it was all super fun! The drive took about 45 mins and we finally arrived.  The tour guide instructed us to take off our shoes and we climbed the sand dunes in our bare feet! I thought the sand was going to be boiling hot because the sand can get extremely hot in Canada and I am thinking Oh Gosh I am kms away from the equator this is going to be hot but the sand was cold! The wind continuously blows thus the sand on the top never stays still unable to retain the heat.  It was absolutely the coolest thing ever, trekking across the sand dunes, one minute at the bottom looking up, then on top of a sand pile 30m in the air.  Unfortunately, I was there in the height of the dry season so all the lagoons that were supposed to be there, one after every sand dune (if you type Lençóis Maranhenses google images you will see its beauty), were gone but one lonely lagoon so our tour group walked 3km across the sand dunes to the lagoon and went for swim! Though now that I think about it, if I was there during the wet season I would not have been able to be at the sand dunes bottom and scale the side to the top, seeing how high the sand dunes actually are.  After a nice swim we trekked back to the highest sand dune in the area and watched the sunset over the dunes.  I can honestly say, I felt like I was on a movie set.  The place looked computerized and doctored.  It was absolutely beautiful and as the sun set, you could feel the magic of where you were. We arrived back to the hotel, I had dinner at the restaurant again and with a dance lesson included as I was the only one there and the bartender was bored. The next day I was travelling back to the airport ready to fly to Manaus for my Amazon adventure to begin!

Amazon Adventure!

I am writing to you from the airport awaiting for my Amazon adventure to begin!  My flight was supposed to leave an hour ago but a big storm has moved through and delayed my flight but I did have a connection and this has eliminated my layover and apart of me thinks it is better this way.   Before I begin my Amazon adventure, I will be taking a detour to the North East first where I will visit a National Park named Lençóis Maranhenses.  You should Google Image that and you will instantly see why I intend to detour.  This park is all white sand dunes, just like a desert, however after each sand dune in the crevice  there is a blue lagoon.  I do not know why, I do not know how but I intend to conquer them! Then on Friday night I will fly across Brazil to Manaus, a city in the heart of the Amazon where I will catch a boat for my Amazon 4 day adventure! I am running out of internet credits and I have to check one thing before I go so I apologize this is short and sweet. Though if I do not post within seven days I have been eaten by an anaconda and I have loved you all so very much.  Wish me luck!

One Month Left...

So this past week marks a mile stone ... I have one month left .. Less now that I am writing this.  I have such a mix of emotions about this... I am so excited to go home.  I even have another adventure planned three days after I land! My family and friends, I cannot wait to celebrate a holiday with them instead of through Skype.  I missed my Grandpas 96th birthday party and those do not come around every year.  I need to get back to a place where I feel like I have some aspect of control and I am not an invader...  Though leaving is absolutely the last thing I want to do.  How can I leave a place that is full of new experiences, new insights?  How can I leave behind the people that have made my experience so wonderful? I had to say good bye to one of them today... Not good, and I feel like this is just the beginning.  I was once told "All good things come to an end but it is easier to let the things go if you have fully experienced it with all your heart and soul".  I am going to say yes, yes I have experienced this with my heart and soul.  Maybe everything did not go according to plan, there was a time I called home in tears, but I pushed through and did some retail shopping the next day.  I excelled, I struggled, I made great friends.  Leaving them is going to be hard as hell but I can look back with no regrets.  Brazil gave me an opportunity and I rode it like a champ.  So to my last month.... Interviews, the desert, the Amazon, the friends, the goodbyes.... Here I go.

A Week in Brasilia!

This past week I went to visit my second Brazilian friend from Trent University in his hometown of Brasilia, Brazil's capital city.  This city has quite a unique history as it was specifically built to be the capital city not long ago. In what should have taken fifty years, in just five Brasilia was built on barren land though as the locals say - with a debt of fifty years.  Built in the shape of an Egyptian eagle, the government buildings and the Presidents house are located within the head of the eagle, the city, bank headquarters, theatres and cathedrals spread throughout the body of the eagle, while the residential apartments are situated within the wings of the Eagle.  My first day, Mario picked me up at the airport and took me back to his home to meet his mama and have lunch.  After lunch we did a little driving tour and picked fruit from native Brazilian trees.  Later we drove to an ice cream parlour and I got my first taste of acai ice cream, a Brazilian tradition.  That night we watched the Brazilian movie Tropa de Elite (The Elite Squad) based on the Rio drug rings within the favelas with the corrupt police and the Elite Squad that fights to restore order.  It was pretty intense to say the least but a great movie to understand what few see when they see Brazil. The full movie is available on you tube if you would like to watch it too.  Wednesday I got a full, in depth tour of the city travelling to the different landmarks, government buildings, and the famous cathedral.  Mario has connections across the city, and when Robert Plant (lead singer of Led Zeppelin) was playing in Brasilia, we were able to get some great tickets to see a great show! Cooler still, right beside the concert hall was a soccer stadium being constructed for the World Cup! This thing was huge I tell you... And now I almost feel witness to the to the wondrous event. Though this was definitely a fun trip to explore more of Brazil, I was fortunate enough to turn this trip into a working trip, and on Thursday and Friday I was able to conduct a few interviews for my thesis.  One of my interviews had even spent some time in Canada thus it was really great for my research to hear their opinions and comparisons.  My flight was for Saturday evening and before I left we travelled to the last few places within the city left unexplored.  All in all it was a great week.  Relaxing though productive, concurring another region of this large country and great to see an old friend again.