The 2023 Brazil Journals, Chapter Seventeen

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Chapter Seventeen:

Food! Food!

The Necessary and the Glorious

 

“Life is uncertain.   Eat dessert first.”

—Ernestine Ulmer

 

 

 

It’s six o’clock and the sun has yet to rise.

Everything is  still and there’s barely a ripple on the pond we’re passing in the behemoth vehicle we’re riding in.

 

We see a capybara in the water near the shore vegetation and about twenty feet away is a caiman, pointed in the direction of the capybara.   Well, this is interesting, I think, and raise my camera.

 

Just how close will the capybara let the predator come?  There is no surface disturbance on the water as the caiman slowly gets closer.  

 

Then suddenly, with a powerful thrust of its tail, the caiman attacks.   

But the capy isn’t asleep.  Up and out of the water the capy rises like a rocket.   We can see the pink inside of the caiman’s mouth.   It was anticipating the delicious taste of that rodent.

 

But the capybara soars too high for the caiman and escapes being breakfast.

 

That was exiciting!

 

 

 

We move on and soon see an enigma standing against one of the pasture wire fences.  It’s a crab-eating fox and, while it does the eat crabs it finds during the flood season, it isn’t a fox at all.

 

It is a member of the dog family, Canidae.  It looks suspiciously like a brown/black-yellow tinged coyote.   In addition to crabs, found trapped in pools when the annual floods recede, it also eats small animals, fruit, insects, turtle eggs, and fowl.

 

   And then there is me.   I love passion fruit, that hard-rinded red, yellow, or purple fruit grown on a vine in tropical countries.   Not only is its taste appealing, but it's rich in essential vitamins and anti0xidents.

 

Barranco Alto is a passion-fruit-lover’s dream lodge.   Several desserts feature passion fruit and a few times there are pitchers of fresh juice made from the fruit.

 

One day I go to the refrigerator in the bar to get a Coke Zero and instead come away with Strawberry and Maracujà (passion fruit).  There may or may not be any left in the fridge by the time we leave Barranco Alto.

 

Another surprise is cashew juice!    Cashews are grown on trees that can yield a surprising amount of fruit called cashew apples.   And, at the tip of each cashew apple is a single nut we know as cashews.

Cashew apples.   Note the single cashew on each fruit.

Cashew juice.

 

But the juice from the cashew apples is amazing.   It is bottled and sold in Brazil.  In India, the extract is fermented and is very popular—more so than the nuts themselves.

 

 

On a late afternoon boat trip on the Rio Negro, we come upon several caimans dining on piranha.   This is quite a sight to see.

 

We linger there until the sun begins to set and the long golden rays of light turn the caimans a rich color as they chomp and swallow.

 

Photographers hanging out with hungry caimans.

It is almost dark when we return to the boat launch and there, also lingering in the water, are several caiman.   They, too, re waiting for food.

 

Not us, fortunately, but this spot is where fishermen clean their catches and throw the innards into the water for the caimans and other fish to enjoy.

 

Puts a different perspective on the food chain.