Mold, Wet Planting, and Santuario da Caraça

With all this rain, we have been struggling with perpetual dampness and wet clothes. I washed clothes last Sunday, and by Thursday most of them still had not dried. Our cabin had become a Petri dish for mold, and whenever I picked up an article of clothing, piece of uneaten food, or backpack, there was a significant chance I would discover another mold outbreak. We tried to remedy the problem as best we could by lighting 3 candles in our common room, but this was minimally effective.

My roommate, Mel, has been attempting to dry her underwear for days.

On Thursday, we went out to plant trees again. In the morning we planted 29 trees on a small farm, a task that was completed in a few minutes. After having a beer and lunch in Belisario, we headed to another farm where we were to plant about 250 seedlings. We stayed and talked to the farmers for a bit, and I got to hold their cockatiel!

A mug at the bar in Belisario... Yes, you do drink out of the nipple, in case you were wondering.

We then got into the combi for a harrowing drive up the hill to where we were planting. It reminded me a lot of the times when we would go camping when I was younger, and I would hold onto the back of the headrest with my eyes tightly shut as Papa eased the truck over rocks the size of hay bales.

This is the hill we were planting trees on, before it started raining.

The hill we were planting on was incredibly steep, and we had to drag the seedlings up it in crates, which was a horrendous task to begin with. About five minutes into this process, it began to rain. The slope became slippery, but we continued. At some point, I realized that my rain jacket was not helping to keep me dry, so I took it off and continued in my shirt. In a few minutes, I was soaking wet. Later, I was cold. By the time we finished, 2.5 hours later, my lips were purple and I was shaking. We went back to the farmer's kitchen to warm up by their fire, but all I really wanted was a shower. However, you cannot rush Brazilian people once they begin a conversation, and we ended up waiting there, freezing and wet, for over an hour. This is the other side of tree planting: it is hard physical labor in unpleasant conditions. It is hauling crates full of soil up a slippery hill. It is being covered in mud from head to toe. It is pulling on a wet pair of pants and socks because you have no dry clothes left. It is slotting trees into the ground one by one with shaking hands and arms.

On Friday, for the first time in longer than I can count, the sun shone for much of the day. We were finally able to dry our clothes and ventilate our cabin, which was a big relief.

On Saturday morning, we woke up at 5:00 and left at 6:30 to drive to Santuario da Caraça, which is a large nature reserve with a church in the middle that is known for feeding the Brazilian Maned Wolf. I slept for most of the drive, but woke up just after the city of Ponte Nova to see a car pulled over on the side of the road with the contents of the trunk strewn out behind it, and five people face down on the road with their hands tied behind their backs. We arrived at the Sanctuary around 1:30 pm, just in time for a classic Brazilian lunch. Afterwards, we got situated in our rooms, which turned out to be a private cabin a little bit up the road next to a big lake.

The room breakfast and lunch were in.

That afternoon, we decided to take a hike up to the Gruta de Lourdes, a cave about 3 kilometers away. It was a very nice hike up, cloudy with some thunder, but the perfect temperature for climbing up a steep hill. We had a great view of a waterfall, as well as the sanctuary from above. Halfway up, there was a small chapel with the foundations of another one that had burned next to it.

As soon as we got to the cave and had looked around, it started to drizzle. At this point it was 4:30, and we knew that we had to head down because sunset was around 5:30, and we did not want to be hiking in the dark. As we were heading back, I had one of the neatest weather-related experiences I've ever had. I was walking in a light drizzle of rain, but could see a darker raincloud diagonally above me. As I watched, I saw the rain coming. The cloud was moving towards me, and beneath it, I watched the downpour move towards me and then engulf me in a wall of falling water. When we got back, I was soaking wet from the waist down, but mostly dry above, thanks to my raincoat.

For many years, the Santuario da Caraça has been setting out food in a courtyard in front of the church for the animals in the reserve. Many nights, visitors are able to see the Brazilian Maned Wolf and other animals as they venture into the courtyard to eat the food set out for them. After dinner, around 7:00, we went out to the courtyard to wait for the animals. They had set out a tray of chicken bones, and people gathered around the edges of the patio. It was cold and we were still damp, but we settled down patiently. Around 8:45, a XXX fox, which they call Cachorro do Mato (Dig of the Forest), appeared and shyly grabbed a chicken bone! I believed it to be one of the wolves, having never seen one before, but realized the next day that I was incorrect. The fox appeared twice more, each time venturing further into the courtyard.

Around 10:00, I was too cold to continue waiting, so I went to take a shower and go to sleep. The next morning, Alex told us that he and Deivid and Arielle had stayed in the courtyard waiting until 3:30 in the morning. They had seen the foxes many more times, but most exciting of all, around 2:30 am, a Brazilian Tapir had come onto the patio to eat the chicken bones! I couldn't believe my ears. I thought he was making this up; tapirs are shy herbivores and do not eat chicken, much less chicken bones. But when he showed us the pictures and videos he had taken, I could clearly see the tapir standing in the courtyard, eating chicken bones! A Google Search of "tapir eating chicken bones" yielded all manner of strange results, but nothing along the lines of carnivorous tapirs. Evidently, however, this tapir has been coming to eat the food they set out since 2014. I do not know what to make of it.

The next morning, I was more than delighted to find that the breakfast buffet had a "make your own pancake" option. This, truly, was a dream come true. After breakfast, we wandered around the museum and the church. It had been a religious school for over 100 years, until a fire burned it down. There were, however, many interesting tools, furniture, clothes, books, and paintings to look at.

(slideshow)

We then decided to take a hike to the waterfall 2 kilometers away before lunch. It was a beautiful day for hiking, cloudy but not rainy. On the way there, we saw the tapirs tracks in the sand.

The water both in the streams and rivers and well as the water that comes out of the taps there is brown, even when it is clean. The waterfall (Cascatinha), was beautiful, but it looked like a waterfall of tea.

After lunch, we started our drive back. For some reason, I was not tired at all on this drive, and used that time to write this blog post. We arrived back at Iracambí around 7:30, just in time for dinner.

Two more exciting bits of news: firstly, I have been accepted directly into Indiana University's O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, and given a scholarship of $9,000 per year (if I decide to go there of course)! Secondly, I have been accepted to an internship in Gottmadingen, Germany, from May 1st through June 30th! I will soon include more information about this internship, but I have been working on setting it up for a while now (since before I left for Brazil), and it is really exciting to have it finalized. Nina will be joining me in Germany for this time, and I'm really looking forward to living together there. I will likely be flying to Germany around April 20th, and once my internship is done on June 30th, Nina and I will be traveling around Germany/Europe for about 3 weeks!

Overall, it has been a very nice weekend. This coming week will be filled with a lot of planting, and on Thursday I am heading to the city of Viçosa for a Capoeira workshop! I will work to keep up with the blog posts. I have heard from several people in the last few weeks that they enjoy reading them, which is always encouraging. In terms of today's post, if anyone can find any other documentation of tapirs eating meat or bones, please share this information with me! I am so puzzled by this!