Moving On

Group photo after my presentation.

This has been a week of lasts and firsts. On Tuesday, we planted 800 trees. It was my last planting and I was very glad to be able to take part in it. It was a lot of trees though, and it took us all day.

On Wednesday, I gave my final presentation at Iracambí, which every volunteer gives an the culmination of their stay. It involves talking about what you did and what you learned. I spent the rest of that day packing up my belongings and cleaning the cabin in preparation for my departure.

That day, we also released a sloth back into the wild. Iracambí is an official release site, so on Tuesday night Robin brought it from a vet in Muriaé. Sloths are very picky eaters, and it wasn't doing too well, but we were hoping that releasing it would be the best way for it to get the food it needed. However, I learned on Friday that it did not survive its release.

(slideshow)

On Thursday morning I woke up early, took a taxi to Limeira, a bus from Limeira to Muriae (1 hour), and another bus from Muriae to Vila Velha (9.5 hours). Vila Velha is the sister city of Vitoria and is where my couchsurfing host lives. I took a taxi to her apartment, and she met me at the gate. Her name is Junia, she's 55 years old, and she lives alone in this apartment. She's very nice and speaks only Portuguese, but with an easily intelligible accent so that I can understand most of what she says. She doesn't know how to cook, so that evening we had grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner.

(slideshow, bus to Muriae and Junia's apartment)

The next morning, I made my way out of the apartment before she woke up. I ate breakfast consisting of mango, coffee cake, and acai juice at a market with a focus on fruit. Afterwards, I finally decided to get a haircut, the last one having been 3 months ago when Nina cut it in our backyard. I am very happy with the result, for cosmetic as well as practicality reasons. Short hair is so much easier to wash and style! It is also MUCH warmer here than at Iracambi, which is very nice but takes some getting used to. I then went to the beach, only a few blocks away from Junia's place! I took off my shoes and walked on the sand at the edge of the water. There were many people out enjoying the sun and the warm water. On Sunday, a friend of Rogeria's is taking me surfing, and I am really excited! The water is so warm that I am not at all afraid of being cold.

On my way back, I stopped at a supermarket to buy some groceries so I could cook some meals for Junia and I. It is a customary thing for couchsurfers to cook for/with their hosts as a way to give back.

(slideshow)

After lunch, Junia and I headed to the Garoto chocolate factory. We managed to get a spot for a tour of the factory. Before the actual tour, we had to go through an intense cleanliness and sanitation process which involved storing all possessions in lockers, putting on hairnets and shirts made of the same material, washing our hands, and having a machine scrub our shoes. We were then taken through the factory and shown the sorting and packaging processes of the chocolates. It is very loud inside the factory, and we were wearing headphones to dampen the noise and allow the tourguides to talk to us. The workers there were also wearing industrial grade hearing protection. The factory employs people with partial or complete hearing damage, and they wear different colored headphones so that others know to communicate with them using sign language. After the tour we were taken into a tasting room where we were allowed to sample all the chocolates the factory produces. Then we were led through the museum, which talked about the history of the company. It was actually started by a German man in the 1910s, and has grown to become one of the major chocolate producers in Brazil. Lastly, they released us into their store, which was a very clever marketing strategy on their part. I bought 28 reais worth of chocolate, which seems like a lot, but it only comes out to $7. (Note: phones were not allowed on most of the tour, so I have few pictures, but here are the ones I do have.)

(slideshow)

Last night, I made a simple dinner out of pasta, tomato sauce, green beans, and eggs. I think yesterday was the first day I have not eaten rice and beans for at least one meal.