The 2023 Brazil Journals, Chapter Thirty-0ne

 

Chapter Thirty-One

Side Effects

 

 

“You have to taste a culture to understand it.”

—Deborah Cater

 

 

 

If you’ve been served a meal on an airliner, then you’ll understand what I’m talking about.  You are handed a teensy tray with all the food items placed just so and everything fits nicely.

 

Fits, that is, until you begin unwrapping and taking the lids off the individual servings.   Then there is no place on the postage stamp-sized tray to put all that debris.

 

So when I was on the long flight from Dallas-Fort Worth to Sáo Paulo, Brazil, I found myself with a serving of white rice in my left hand and another of cooked brown beans in my right hand.   There was only one empty spot on the tray.

Araras Eco Lodge

 

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” it’s said and in a moment of sheer genius, I dump the beans on top of the rice.   It's a good combination.

 

After a few days in Brazil, I discover I wasn’t such a smarty because rice with beans in a delicious, thick, soupy broth is a staple in the Brazilian diet.   Every lunch and dinner buffet always has a large container of rice and a large container of beans.

 

I indulged.   Frequently.

UFO

 

Well, you know what happens when you eat beans.   Eventually, they make their presence known in the form of gas, which is expelled from the body. 

That’s understandable, but does it have to trumpet its escape into the air so everyone knows you’ve been eating beans?

Our table in the lodge

 

I discovered that when I picked up my eight-pound camera/lens combination, I have to clench almost every muscle in my body to hold it up and focus without shaking.   Clenching those abdominal muscles results in that certain inevitable side effect.

I often found myself apologizing, excusing myself, or just ignoring it and hoping they think someone else did it.

 

I stopped eating rice and beans for a while but at Araras Eco Lodge, our last lodge on this trip, I had a very small serving.

 

***

 

 

Shelly comes to get me the next day and says she’s found an orange-backed troupial, a particularly colorful bird that I’d been hoping to see.   It isn’t far away and we maneuver under a large tree to catch the bird in an open spot through the leaves and branches.  Shelly is standing behind and off to one side of me.

 

I lift that heavy camera almost straight up and clench.

Juvenile wattled jacana

 

The bean gas emits a loooooong, high-pitched escaping squeal and Shelly starts laughing.   So do I.   Getting an in-focus shot under these circumstances is a miracle, but I get the shot.

Orange-backed troupial

 

We go back to our rooms and later I send Shelly a message:  

 

“I am thinking about changing the name of my blog to “The Phlatulent Photographer.”

 

 

Capybara, the rodents everybody loves.

 

 

The 2023 Brazil Journals, Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty

Goodness, Gracious, Great Snakes Alive!

Even if a snake is not poisonous, it should pretend to be poisonous.

--Chanakya

Virginia and I are watching a drama play out at the water fountain when Shelly comes striding toward us yelling, "I HAVE A SNAKE IN MY BATHROOM!!!"  

Deja Vu all over again.   The first time it was a frog.

She says she heard noises coming from the bathroom and when she opened the door, there was a long snake on her bathroom counter, knocking her things onto the floor.

Virginia and I grab our cameras and run to Shelly's room to see the snake.  While we angle for the best shooting spot, Shelly returns with a woman from the lodge who is holding a broom.

Darned if there isn't a snake in Shelly's bathroom!   Shelly gets all the best roommates.

"Get out of the bathroom and let her in," Shelly commands anxiously.

This snake cantilevered its body vertically trying to reach the window and escape before the lady with broom urged it to hasten its journey.

"No way, Shelly.   Photos come first," I reply laughingly.   "Photos or it didn't happen."

Finally we let the lady with the broom into the small area and she coaxes it out the open window, which is screened but the screen has been pulled away from the bottom corner.

It's a parrot snake, I say, just like the one Virginia and I were watching at the water fountain in front of  the lodge.   And that was a drama unfolding.

The water fountain in front of the lodge.

The white blobs are water droplets.   That bulge at right might be the frog.

This snake has swallowed a frog and there was a large bulge in the snake's abdomen.

You can actually see the bulk of the frog inside the snake.  The snake positioned itself  with water is running on the frog bulge, which I found fascinating.   Look how long it is.   My guess is five feet or so.

Octavio assures us it is only mildly venomous.   Which means, I tell him jokingly,  that you'll get sick and hope you die, but won't.

This is a very slender snake.

Such a pretty color.

Note how it uses its body to create a bridge and then comes back upon itself.

I find it uttering interesting, coming from a place where there are no snakes in the wild (just bears and moose), how snakes can use their own bodies to bridge an open space such as the snake is doing here.  

SO, I did some research and after finally finding the right keywords, found this:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8uubvO4Ids

Parrot snakes can attain a length of 68 inches, with 23 inches being its tail.

There was an afternoon vehicle excursion scheduled for the afternoon, but this happened:

Right at the end I swing my phone up and you get a glimpse of Lala the macaw staying out of the rain.

I went to my room.   This was going to last a while.

I was still trying to figure out if I had a cold or something else.   I had woken during the night with congestion.   Ah, it's a cold, I thought.   I took an anti-histamine and that was the last of the congestion.  No energy, achy body, yes.   But no congestion.

After a while, I looked out.   Still raining.   I went to tell the group I was going to skip the game drive.

Well, what better way to drive away the snake heebie-jeebies than chocolate?

Some more photos:

Grayish Baywing

Kiskadee

Hmmm.   Maybe a palm tanager

Same as above

Same as above

The 2023 Brazil Journals, Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Naps and Birds

 

 Blessed are the curious,

for they shall have adventures.

--Unknown

 

 

 

It’s 4:15 and there’s no alarm sounding from the cell phone under my pillow.

 

Now, 5 A.M., time we meet for breakfast.   All is quiet.

 

Then, 5:30, time when Vanderlay backs the boat out of its slip.  My pillow remains quiet.

 

Just before 7 A.M. there’s not a peep from the pillow, but I’m awake anyway and shut the alarm off before it rings.

 

I’m not late for anything.   Today, we got to sleep in because there’s no morning game ride on the river.   At 8 o'clock-ish, we will leave for the next and last lodge of this fabulous trip.

Photo from Araras website

 

The dining room is still open for breakfast, so I’m not hungry when we check out, pay our laundry bills, and load up in our van.  One hundred and forty-seven kilometers of dirt and gravel and 122 wooden bridges on the Transpantaneira highway as it crosses the Pantanal in the state of Mato Grosso to connect Porto Jofre with Poconé.   

 

We aren’t going as far as Poconé today, however.   We’re heading to Araras Eco Lodge, our last lodge, and from where we will make the final drive to catch a plane in Poconé and fly back to Sao Paulo in three days.

 

We stop along the way for a restroom break and Magnum ice cream bars.   As for me, I am still not feeling well so I stretch out across the seats and belt buckles in the back row of the van.

 

And then, we’re there.   We register at a lovely table in the patio and get our room keys.

 

One row of rooms.   Photo from Araras website.

The rooms as basic but have every thing I need, including a frog for a roommate!!!

My room.

 A very short video!!!

Dining room and bar.

Dining room

Our table.

Octavio and his wife Larissa.    They met when Larissa worked at this lodge.   Virginia is at left.

After lunch, I wander around the property and find caimans and birds galore.

 

 

Note all the rocks beyond the dugout.   That's where the birds are that I photograph from the spot where I am standing  to take this photo..   Nice having a 500 mm long lens.   

Note the vegetation in the above photo and then the almost-covered caiman in this photo.   Sneaky little things.

Rufous cachalote

Black-tailed tityra

Yellow-billed cardinal

Rufous cachalote

No caimans in the pool.

A little later, another find.   There’s a water fountain right in front of the dining hall that attracts all kinds of birds and other critters.   I sit on a padded bench under an awning that covers the length of the building and photograph birds to my heart’s content.

Yellow-rumped cacique

Yellow-rumped cacique

A nest box for hyacinth macaws.

This is Lala, a semi-wild blue and yellow macaw.

Her favorite perch is right above the entrance to the dining room.

She does take food from your hand.   This time, it's a banana.

Octavio says there are no big tours planned for this lodge.   It’s meant to be a couple of relaxing days before we head home, and that’s fine with me.    He does take Shelly and Virginia on a walkabout, though, and tomorrow there will be a short tour of the property in a large safari vehicle.

 

In the meanwhile, it’s naps and birds for me.

A UFO

Purplish Jays

Cattle tyrant

Probably a juvenile barred woodpecker.

Barred woodpecker.

And again.

Rufous-bellied thrush-like.   Yes, that's its name.

In the heat of the afternoon, Lala takes a nap on the patio with us.

Snoozing Lala.