Brasil - Our last days in South America

Apologies for the long delay in posting. We left South America for Europe and have spent the majority of time with friends and family, so updating the blog has not been our top priority. However, we have a bit of time here in Copenhagen, so we are attempting to catch up.

We left off having finished volunteering in Bolivia and on our way to Brasil for Carnaval....

Goias
From one line in our guidebook about a "joyous Carnaval celebration little known to outsiders", we headed for the small town of Goias Velho. Our guidebook proved correct as we really enjoyed the 5-day celebration in this beautiful town, and we were probably the only foreigners there. The people were super-friendly and tried very hard to communicate with us, even though we quickly learned that our basic Spanish knowledge was of no help in understanding Brasilian Portuguese. We did manage to communicate that Ben was from Australia, which provoked questions such as "Is it cold there?" and "What language do they speak there?". However little else they knew about Australia, they did know that they made it to the World Cup this year. As long as we could somehow relate all of our conversation to the World Cup, we got along just fine. We didn't bring the camera out much as we were too busy having a good time (and didn't want to stand out more than we already did), but we managed to snap some shots of the brightly painted buildings lining the cobbled streets, as well as one night of the celebration. Samba dancing and drum squads everywhere!




Brasilia
After Carnaval, we headed east to Brasilia. Much like Australia's capital, Canberra, Brasilia was constructed roughly 50 years ago in the middle of nowhere, Brasil, for the sole purpose of being the capital. The city contains some really beautiful buildings, most designed by the architect, Oscar Niemeyer. We climbed the radio tower for a good view of the city center with the congress building (shaped like a giant H for "humanity") at the end. We only went in a few of the buildings. One, the Itamarati palace (for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) is surrounded by a water garden and is very beautiful inside, containing gardens, cocktail rooms, dining rooms, and many sculptures. We also went in the Cathedral Metropolitana, shaped like a giant crown of thorns with a ceiling made of stained glass.


We were also impressed with some structures not constructed by Niemeyer. The Dom Bosco Santuary was really beautiful with all four walls filled with stained glass of varying shades of blue and a massive chandelier made of Murano glass. After sitting inside for a while enjoying the play of light through the windows, we exited and were greeted with a world made all of yellow, as our eyes attempted to readjust to unfiltered sunlight. At the end of the day, we made it out to the JK Bridge. The design was inspired by the flight of a skipping stone, and it was named the most beautiful bridge in the world in 2003 by the Engineer's Society of Western Pennsylvania (yay, Pennsylvania!).



Ouro Preto
As Brasil continued to get more and more expensive the further east that we went (hostel accomodations were roughly 5 times more expensive than Bolivia....ouch), we decided to delay going to Rio by heading to another beautiful small town, Ouro Preto. A colonial gold mining town, the city has beautiful buildings lining steep (!) cobbled streets and each hill is crowned with a church (13 in all). The hostal we stayed at was really lovely, with a great view of the city from their bird and flower filled gardens.



Rio de Janeiro
We finally made it to Rio with only two days left in Brasil. We made the most of it by heading to the top of Pao de Acucar (translated as Sugar Loaf) mountain for some views of the city. We were almost thwarted by thick fog that decided to gather only at the top of the mountain, but we were lucky and it blew off long enough for us to take some photos (the buildings lining the beautful white beach behind Ben is the famed Copacabana section of Rio). If you look closely at the last skyline photo, you can just spot the statue of Christ the Redeemer crowning the peak of Corcovado. We also took in a football game at Maracana Stadium (which has held over 200,000 screaming Brazilian fans at one time). We sat in the fan section for one of the teams, so we were surrounded by dancing, clapping, and singing fans jumping up and down and waving massive flags the entire game, which definitely added to the atmosphere.




We flew out of Rio on March 10th, and have traveled through parts of Italy, Croatia, Germany, and now Denmark. We have been staying with the most wonderful people (thanks to all of our excellent hosts!). We hope to update the blog soon with some European pictures.

Parque Ambue Ari - Volunteering with Pumas

**Two blogs in two days! If you haven't seen our Bolivia blog, check it out below this one. We're headed into Brasil for Carnaval and our last two weeks in South America - Europe here we come!**

We spent two weeks in the jungle in Bolivia volunteering at Parque Ambui Ari, the new property for Inti Warra Yassi, ans organization dedicated to provided homes for jungle animals that have been removed from their natural habitat. (Check out their website at www.intiwarayassi.org). This was an amazing and unique experience that we are so lucky to have found out about and done. The accomodations were basic (no electricity), and we have never seen so many mosquitoes (multiple layers of clothing and mosquito nets were a necessity, despite the sometimes sweltering heat), but this was more than made up for by the chance to interact with some amazing animals and all the wonderful people that we met there (who we want to thank for sharing their pictures with us - we've borrowed a couple for this posting, cheers guys!)

We were assigned our first day to the pumitas - three female pumas about 1.3 years old. They have been raised since they were 1 month old by the park, and as such acted more like big housecats than wild animals. Their caretaker, Noemi, of the last 8 months left the day before we arrived, and our first two days on our own (with another volunteer, Sam) proved to be extremely challenging as we tried to learn how to motivate the girls - it was not looking to be a fun two weeks. However, thankfully, we were joined by a fourth volunteer, Sarah, and this along with our developing relationships with the animals, turned the situation around. We got to know the uniquely different and delightful personalities of each of these three lovely girls, and we were so lucky to have cats that were interested in us and gave us such love in return. The two weeks ended up flying by in a blur, and we were so sad to have to say goodbye to our cats and the other volunteers. We highly recommend this experience to anyone with a spare few weeks in Bolivia - we would have stayed longer if we could!

Ben started out walking Wara, the largest and reddest of the three. We nicknamed her our war queen as she was the most likely to pounce on her sisters during the walk. She had beautiful big eyes, and could be intimidating at feeding time. However, like a big pussycat, she could also melt in your hands if you gave her a good chin and chest rub.



Karen started out walking Yassi, the second biggest. Yassi has the darkest facial markings, and when she meowed (yes, they all meowed, just like kittens), she looked like a sad clown. She really likes to be in front of her sisters during the walks, and would let you know she was happy to be there with her unbelievely loud, burbling purr and frequent stops for cuddling. She loves to play with the fruits of the cacao tree, and would try to climb those trees to get the fruit whenever possible.



Inti was the smallest and most independent of the three cats. She was always easy to identify with her red collar. Inti loves to play with sticks, particularly fetching them out of the water, though she really looks pathetic as a wet cat. When she was feeling affectionate, she'd show it - we all have received a good licking from Inti (as Sam is demonstrating) - she'd give Ben a full head bath which was fine as long as he could keep her rough tongue off his sensitive neck skin.



Our daily activities involved taking the cats for two walks per day, which meant walking through knee-deep water and having wet feet all day. The cats loved to take us on sporadic sprints over logs and through mud and water. They also loved to pounce on each other, which meant we had to watch out for stray claws and hold on tightly as we could get pulled into the attack or dragged behind an escaping cat.



Each day we took the cats down to the river for a swim. Inti particularly liked to fetch sticks out of the water. We were also responsible for feeding them meat twice each day, which they caught in mid-air as we threw it to them. Every other day we hand fed them eggs, good fun.



Other cats
In addition to our three girls, the park has a number of other cats to care for. The are three other adult female pumas, including the lovely, playful, and cross-eyed Tequila whose cage we passed on our way to the pumitas. There are also two male jaguars, Ru and Rupi. Ben got the chance to walk Rupi one day, and he learned first hand how much bigger (and scarier) the jaguars are compared to the pumas - the pumas weigh in at about 30 kilos and can manage to fit your hand in their mouths, the jaguars weigh over 100 kilos and can fit your entire head in your mouth (as some of the volunteers found out) - it's all in play, though.



Small animals
Each of the volunteers started their morning by feeding and cleaning up after one of the many small animals that call Ambue Ari home. Ben and I took care of the pios (American ostriches) who can't really be classified as small, especially judging from the quantity of thier droppings (which we had to shovel up - lucky us!). There were parrots, loros (small parrots), a deer, tortoises, a young ocelot (spotted cat), monkeys (more later), and the cutest baby giant anteater that Ete took care of (she and Marco manage the park). This little gal is someday going to grow to 2 meters!




Monkeys
Our lives were definitely touched by the day to day activities of the two resident male howler monkeys: Coco and Faustino. From howling concerts throughout the day, to cuddling and grooming "old man" Coco who always managed to look sad (except when he was getting some good loving from Sarah, or trying to lick sweat from strange parts of your body), to pulling them out of our rooms, kitchen, and dining room - the howlers were an integral part of life at the park. In addition, there was a baby howler monkey, Junior (sitting on Karen's shoulders), a family of wild howler monkeys that showed up for feeding times (their baby around Ben's neck), and our very own spider monkey, Hugui, who made the most amazing sounds and was great fun to watch.



Banditos and Chanchos
Apart from the resident monkeys, the other animals we saw on a regular basis (and worked hard to keep out of every building) were the banditos and chanchos (pigs). The little creatures with the striped tails are actually coatimundies but nicknamed "banditos" by the locals. As the name would suggest, they really were trouble makers and were best summed up by a fellow volunteer Sean as ¨they do everything frantic¨ whether they are scratching themselves, searching for food, or attacking you. They can be adorable - such as the red one (Mimi), who would routinely climb your pant legs (or face) in a flurry of rapid sniffs and squeaks as she searched vainly for food - or be right little $*%!s when they break into everything looking for food like the dark one here who the volunteers nicknamed "Bitey". The chanchos were also free to roam and were usually harmless enough, paying you no attention on their endless search for food scraps or roots to dig up. However, add food into the equation (like when one gets into the food store) and the cute, bristle-covered creatures would suddenly bare tusks and go for legs. A baby pig arrived while we were there, and we learned that they did start out cute (Wilbur became his surrogate mother and the pig followed him everywhere barking like a squeaky dog to get fed)